garagebio5.mp3

This weekend, open science advocates from around the world gathered for the 2nd annual Open Science Summit at the iconic Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA (home of Google, 23andMe, and the garage biotech lab that inspired BioCurious).

We were able to steal away the Summit’s creator, Joseph Jackson, for long enough to hear his motivation for doing the Summit and why Open Science matters. At the end of the summit (and at the end of the podcast), he announced his next, big thing: the launch of http://opensciencealliance.com

Also in town for the Summit was Jacob Shiach, whose life changed during the first Open Science Summit. His first science conference, the Summit gave him access to scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs – all passionate about the notion of open, connected science. This experience led him to create Citizen Science Quarterly, the first print magazine for the movement. Jacob also started the Arc Research Collaborative, a community biolab in Houston, TX, where he teaches classes on bioinformatics and molecular techniques, and dreams up his next big projects, including a think tank.

We leave you with Garage Bio’s new favorite book, Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science, by Michael Nielson. According to the author, “The book is about networked science: the use of online tools to transform the way science is done….networked science has the potential to dramatically speed up the rate of scientific discovery, not just in one field, but across all of science. Furthermore, it won’t just speed up discovery, but will actually amplify our collective intelligence, expanding the range of scientific problems which can be attacked at all.” What a beautiful thought. Be sure to check it out and let us know what you think of it, and the podcast, by writing mailbag@garagebio.org

Thanks for listening.

Links:

• The first CitSci project, started in 1900: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_Bird_Count
• Name stellar dust particles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stardust@home
• FoldIt, a protein folding game: http://fold.it
• Crowdsourcing the discovery of an AIDS-like virus: http://www.forbes.com/sites/sarikabansal/2011/09/28/crowdsourcing-gamers-solve-protein/
• BioCurious in Forbes – Could Community Labs Hatch the Next Generation of Bio Innovators? http://www.forbes.com/sites/techonomy/2011/10/25/citizen-science-takes-off-could-community-labs-hatch-the-next-generation-of-bio-innovators/

Sorry for the long delay between posts! Both Eri and I have been busy traveling. We recorded some great interviews at the Open Science Summit last weekend, though, and will be getting a new episode on citizen science posted sometime towards the end of the week.

In the meantime, if anyone would like to give me feedback on my upcoming TEDxVictoria talk on biohackerspaces I’d love it! You can watch a dry run at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urN92EiFSaw

Thanks!

–Derek

I also wanted to get ideas on a TEDxVictoria talk that I’m trying to put together to explain to a lay audience just why it is that I’m so excited about getting biology out into the hackerspaces. I’d love to hear any comments you might have – examples to include, etc. Please send feedback to mailbag@garagebio.org

(I’m also still trying hard to work on show audio. I think I over-processed today’s audio because the low-bitrate mp3 sounds horrible to me. Here it is if the higher quality one is too much to download, though: http://s3.amazonaws.com/garagebio/pod4.mp3)

Links:
my writeup on the transformation class
Richard Resnick’s great talk on genomic data
some higher efficiency chemical transformation techniques
Electroporation
The Bio-Rad CaCl protocol
The recent DIY Bio transformation thread
Finally, I fumbled around a bit on the ampicillin mechanism discussion, here’s a better description

Sorry if the boat noises in the background are distracting! We should be going to more traditional interviews now that I’m back in Canada and Eri and I are doing this remotely over Skype. We also have a new mic for local interviews now.

Thanks a lot to Josh for inviting us all along on his sailing adventure! He’s taking classes at the OCSC sailing school out of the Berkeley marina and we got to take out an awesome Beneteau 373. Enjoy!

As always, please send comments to mailbag@garagebio.org

Links:
http://www.pearlbiotech.com/
http://openpcr.org/
GeneLaser (a product of Cofactor Bio)
http://diybio.org/
OCSC Sailing School

(oh, and a mistake in the podcast… Mac Cowell was still in Boston when we recorded the interview with Misha, but he’s now in SF! West coast wins again BTW. sorry about all the background noise in the second half, I’m still working on audio and it will get better!)

Links:
BioCurious website
Singularity University
Here is a Human Being
Berkeley’s Bring your DNA to school controversy
Exposing the student body
Stanford’s genomics course
CoFactor Bio
Open PCR

Links:
BioCurious website
Eri’s OSCON talk
DIY Bio thread on transformation protocols
George Church’s home page
Singularity University
OpenPCR