PCR to the People

"If you want to change the world in some big way - that's where you should start - biological molecules." - Bill Gates

Molecular biology is starting to undergo a cultural change - moving from labs to garages and spare rooms. Soon every man and his dog will soon be meddling with molecular biology in a vision which is reminiscent of the the 1980s computer-garage-hackers - who were so last millennium by the way.

At the heart of this movement is the hope that the manipulation of DNA, the operating system of the cell, which was once so mind-bogglingly-Nobel-Prize-winningly complex that it was the preserve of Professors and PhDs only, is gradually becoming facile, and may one-day be commonplace. It's a gradual distillation of the disciplines of recombinant DNA production and synthetic biology into workaday and useful "tools". 

I use the word tool in an abstract sense, rather than a hammer and spanner sense, in the way that a PC is a tool - a facilitator for (hopefully) greater things. Extending the analogy of computer technology, people don't really need to understand the concepts of binary and logic circuits to print off an essay from Word '95 - and the same can be said for synthetic biology. If the world of molecular biology was standardised enough, and familiar enough, and most importantly cheap enough, people would be able to manipulate (and create) biology to their heart's content.  

Facilitating this movement from lab space to loft space are two movements. 

First, molecular biology is pretty open source - and the hope is that it will become increasingly open source. Extraordinary useful resources, little things like the Human Genome for example, are essentially open to Joe Public - even if it's difficult for Joe Public (or myself for that matter) to make head or tail of the information presented. Programs which present the information in a sensible and utilitarian manner however are all over the web - are are extremely helpful. Other databases, such as the PDB which focuses on different (but not necessarily separate) areas of molecular biology, are popping into existence all the time - with a basic prerequisite of open access for all. These databases are the raw material for the budding garage DNA enthusiast - it's a library is to an aspiring authors. Garage DNA meddlers - just like authors - can cut and paste DNA from databases to create new and inventive organisms. 

An OpenPCR machine - for $512 you too can make copies of DNA!

Second, is that the price of manipulating DNA is gradually moving into the amenable zone. Reading or "sequencing" DNA is almost becoming redundantly inexpensive. The individual letters (known as bases) of a string of DNA can be read for far less that $0.01 each. Within the decade (if not sooner) it is believed that sequencing your 3 trillion bases long genome could be $1,000 (or less - if the dollar is still in existence by 2020 and not replaced with renminbi). In 2020 you'll probably be able to spit in a tube, or swab your cheek, send it off mail order, and hey presto in a few days you'll have your genome sent back to you on a futuristic floppy disk.  To put this in perspective, the sequencing of the first Human Genome took the best part of 21 years and three billion dollars. Other applications are abound; hand-held DNA sequences may make it quicker to sample the DNA of an unknown species of plant rather than look it up in a field guide. Producing your own DNA (now as oligonucleotide synthesis) however is still more expensive and labour intensive, but there are plenty of plans to overcome this. And as my old pal Craig Venter showed, synthesising an entire genome is within the realms of possibility - although rather out of the price range of (presumably) you and (definitely) I.

When manipulating DNA, sequencing DNA, and synthesising DNA becomes easy and affordable interesting things are set to happen. When what was once a major limitation of "programming" biology is removed, the whole arena becomes infinitely more accessible. Imagine early computer programmers worrying about how much each line of code cost the programmer to write or even read - it would have been an omnipresent inhibitor to everyone's creativity. When the cost-constraints for tinkering with DNA are a relic of the past - that's when coming home from work and playing with the genome of the organism your designing in your garage becomes a possibility.