... One citizen biologist is trying to modify Jellyfish genes and adding them to yoghurt to detect the presence of Melamine (which was implicated in contaminated baby milk in China). She intends, if successful, to release the design into the public domain. ... Where do these so called garage geneticists get their technology and raw material? Many pick up basic equipment on eBay. As for materials, they have something akin to GNU/Linux software repositories on which to call. MIT has a registry of standard biological parts called biobricks. The remit could almost have been written by a [Richard] Stallman clone:
The Registry is based on the principle of “get some, give some”. Registry users benefit from using the parts and information available from the Registry in designing their engineered biological systems. In exchange, the expectation is that Registry users will, in turn, contribute back information and data on existing parts and new parts that they make to grow and improve this community resource.
... [T]he Biobricks Foundation (BBF) has not opted for a species of viral licence, though it has taken Science Commons, an offshoot of the Creative Commons, as the basis for developing a legal framework for its activities. ...
One of the best and most interesting takes I have read on these issues to date is a Ph.D thesis on open source biotechnology by Janet Hope which is available an an online PDF. It is particularly good on discussing the biological equivalents of the GPL, copyleft and what constitutes source code and binaries ... Also highly recommended is an introduction to science commons by John Wilbanks and James Boyle which is particularly good at eliciting the problems with “proprietary” science and how they can inhibit the rate of progress, discovery and application ...
Nextbio is an interactive life sciences search engine which searches through and correlates experiments, literature and clinical [data] to assist researchers to make new discoveries. This is done through a conventional search engine interface. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 6/02/2009 05:32:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
