Intro to Biotinkering
| Description | This session will provide an introduction to the Do It Yourself (DIY)-Bio movement. We will explore the basics of Biotechnology, Genetic Engineering and what we can do with this in our DIY lab. We will learn the principles of bacterial transformation and some basic hardware hacks. You will get a first hands on experience on how to work in a wetlab.
Further to that - get ready to reprogram cells, assemble synthetic DNA, sketch metabolic pathways and simulate cellular behavior on your computer. With TinkerCell programming cells has become as easy as designing circuit boards. In this workshop you will learn how to design your own. If you have spare webcameras or anything you can imagine to be suitable to be used in a lab, bring it over and let's see what we can build of it!! |
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| Website(s) | |
| Type | Workshop |
| Keyword(s) | social, political, hardware, art, safety |
| Person organizing | Jessica & Pieter |
| Language | de - German, en - English |
| Other session... | |
| Subtitle | DIY Bio in Germany |
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| Starts at | 2013/12/28 11:00:00 AM |
| Ends at | 2013/12/28 02:00:00 PM |
| Duration | 180 minutes |
| Location | Hall 13 |
Computer Science and Biotechnology share a lot of similarities - we deal with code at some point, and are looking for ways of proper implementation. The DIY Bio movement is a still a young association, with a growing community, and we would like to invite you all to share ideas how to bridge hard ware hacking to reprogramming DNA in organisms within the local legal frameworks. Like computers cells consist of the software (DNA and RNA) and the hard ware (cellular components, organelles, communication pathways, energy sources). However the complexity of cells is based on the fact that hardware and software affect each other making the organism an autonomous system that can actively react on the environmental changes. This is the exiting aspect in the Molecular Biology field.
This workshop is intended to provide an introduction to the DIY Bio movement for interested laymen or professionals. We will start with a small presentation, outlining the history of the movement, its intention(s)(as far is this is possible to generalize). Aferwards we will focus a little more in detail on the principles of genetic engineering, what we can do with this technique and then it will be hands on. We will build a small USB microscope, and observe whatever we want to see magnified. We will extract DNA and we will show you the basic principles of transformation and genetic modification of a cell using the blue genes kit (look here for further details - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_white_screen). You will be able to get first hands on experience on how to handle micro-organisms, DNA, and you will get an impression on how it feels to work in a DIY-wetlab.
Speaking of hardware and software... We will also introduce you to TinkerCell: Get ready to reprogram cells, assemble synthetic DNA, sketch metabolic pathways and simulate cellular behavior on your computer. With TinkerCell programming cells has become as easy as designing circuit boards. In this workshop you will learn how to design your own.