DIYbio

Self-portrait

DIYbio.org was founded in 2008 with the mission of establishing a vibrant, productive and safe community of DIY biologists. Central to our mission is the belief that biotechnology and greater public understanding about it has the potential to benefit everyone. (http://diybio.org/)

Description

DIYbio is a project that includes professional scientists, amateurs, communities and organizations whose motto is the practice of biological scientific research and the development of "Do It Yourself" (DIY) laboratory equipment that can be freely replicated. The project began with the realization of a laboratory in the garage of Rob Carlson in 2005, where he worked on a molecular biology project. In 2008, Jason Bobe (Genomes.org's Executive Director of Personal) and Mackenzie Cowell (amateur biologist) founded DIYbio to promote bio-hacking, develop cheaper research tools and spread openness in research and education around science.

The community contains a collection of hardware with open files for the manufacture of devices with the use of Arduino, as well as a section with safety experts for handling equipment and substances. The project is intended to generate a platform to communicate research projects between community members located in North America, Europe, Asia, Oceania and South America.

The research topics involve synthetic biology that is responsible for the practice and study of genetic engineering and the abstraction of the genetic code. They have also developed bioinformatics research and programming languages such as BioPerl or BioPython.

In 2011, delegates from different groups organized a series of congresses to develop a code as a framework for community laboratories, to discuss ethical issues regarding biology practices and their relations with transparency, security, open access, education, community, peaceful purposes, respect, accountabilty and environment. As a result, two ethical codes were published, one in Europe and one in the United States.

Publications

DIYbio (2011) Draft DIYbio Code of Ethics from North American Congress.

DIYbio (2011) Draft DIYbio Code of Ethics from European Congress.

Links

URL: http://diybio.org/

Wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://diybio.org/

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIYbio_(organization)