I’ve been working on a synthetic DNA assembly company. Basically, I figured out how to assemble DNA for people at a fraction of what it normally costs, so they give me a sequence, and then I make it in real life for them, then ship it to them. Most of my customers have been AI protein designers, ironically. Turns out SOMEBODY has to wrangle atoms in the real biological world and that’s me! After almost a year of work…
are you not scared of synthesizing deadly bacteria?
No, I know pretty much everything I synthesize. Once I don't, I'll just connect some screening software.
Now this is interesting. I've read about using synthetic DNA for data storage, but other uses surely abound. I don't suppose you'll need documentation help at some point in the near future...?
Synthetic DNA for data storage seems much higher to degradation (ie, heat, light, or other sources of radiation). Not sure if I would use syn DNA to for anything long term.
The oldest sequenced DNA is 1.6 million years old. In the right conditions, it lasts far longer than pretty much any storage method right now. Plus I also sometimes store things in Bacillus subtilis, which is very hardy https://keonigandall.com/posts/sporenet.html
I found a virology textbook at the local Catholic book fair when I was in 6th grade, got hooked, teacher in 7th grade let me order GFP transformation kits to the school that I could do at home, then off to the races from there. I was in this article if you're interested in more deets: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/science/biohackers-gene-e...
Cool! Though it's a bit scary how easy it would be for someone to make something dangerous as mentioned in the nyt article. The 2018 article ends: >“There are really only two things that could wipe 30 million people off of the planet: a nuclear weapon, or a biological one,” .... >“Somehow, the U.S. government fears and prepares for the former, but not remotely for the latter. It baffles me.” I guess we may have seen…
Personally, I think the threat from the biologics itself is a little overstated. If COVID was released from a lab (I think it was natural), it was most likely due to bad governance and management of the lab. For DIY things - most DNA can be screened. I have had companies offer screening services for about 50k-100k a year. I can't afford that! So hopefully a free service or something near to that comes online.
I’ve been working on a synthetic DNA assembly company. Basically, I figured out how to assemble DNA for people at a fraction of what it normally costs, so they give me a sequence, and then I make it in real life for them, then ship it to them. Most of my customers have been AI protein designers, ironically. Turns out SOMEBODY has to wrangle atoms in the real biological world and that’s me! After almost a year of work…
If I ever met you in real life I think you would be the coolest person I've ever met.
Not yet. :) All I have so far is a minimal Flask app that worked well enough for the last party. Working on building something new in Go for the next iteration
Non-ironically would love some rough flask code to play with haha.
Currently porting some crappy one-off apps I wrote to FastAPI.
Yes, working on Sonomo, a platform that allows investors to invest in music royalties, an income-generating asset that pays monthly dividends. Investors can choose to invest in individual songs or curated collections of songs called "Baskets" to diversify their portfolio. https://sonomo.com
I'm working https://annotate.dev , a tool inspired by the Stripe documentation, to let anyone create step by step code walkthroughs. Here's a sample of a walkthrough you can create: https://annotate.dev/p/hello-world/learn-oauth-2-0-by-buildi... Would love to hear any feedback thoughts!
This is awesome!! I can see a major use case for enterprise or government but along with that would come the desire for on-prem. Any chances of that happening?