Every community deserves to be able to make its own food, medicine and materials with sustainable biological technologies; and every community deserves to be able to design and engineer biological solutions to the challenges they face. However, while ecosystem-scale biological technologies like agriculture are widely distributed across the world, the capacity for advanced molecular- and cellular-scale bioengineering (such as synthetic biology) remains largely concentrated in a few wealthy cities in a few wealthy nations. However, we could be on the precipice of a massive change in this area. For one thing, the patents on many of the molecular tools and techniques essential to this type of biotechnology have now expired. The development of the Open Materials Transfer Agreement / OpenMTA, essentially an open source wetware license, now enables the free and collaborative sharing of genetic and biological materials for others to copy, modify, redistribute and sell. And with the creation of the Free Genes library (a growing collection of 2500+ off-patent DNA parts made freely available under the OpenMTA), the price of raw DNA synthesis is no longer a fundamental barrier to reducing the cost of advanced bioengineering.

Given these developments, how do we make bioengineering, and in particular setting up and running a bio(tech) lab, as cheap and accessible as it can possibly be? Can we create a worldwide network of decentralized nodes of biotechnological production? Can we build the bionet? Event goals: Brainstorm, recruit and coordinate efforts to build a frugal bio lab.

Led by Isaac Larkin (FreeGenes Project), Harry Akligoh (Hive Biolab), Sarah Ware (BioBlaze), and Scott Pownall (Open Science Network)

ZOOM ROOM: RIBOSOME

https://mit.zoom.us/j/99515146425

ALL TIMES ARE SHOWN AS EASTERN TIME BY DEFAULT