The following is an edited excerpt.
Right now it’s a storeroom filled to the ceiling with cardboard boxes and cast-off gizmos, but HiveBio’s hacker space is being transformed into the latest frontier for a nationwide DIY biotech movement.
Fueled by crowdfunding, grants and membership fees, community labs like HiveBio are delving into what’s arguably the 21st century’s hottest scientific frontier. Once, projects such as DNA barcoding, biofuel-producing bacteria and glow-in-the-dark organisms were the exclusive domain of professional researchers. Now they’re also the domain of amateurs — including Katriona Guthrie -Honea, a 16-year-old student at Seattle’s Ingraham High School who is one of HiveBio’s founders.
Read the original article in its entirety here: Biotech meets DIY hacker culture, sparking new wonders and worries
