I just found your group today, and was wondering if anyone has expressed any interest in the diyBio space?

I've never heard of diyBio or heard anyone in our group mention it, but I see what it is at diybio.org. What do you mean by "the diyBio space?" Is this a particular physical place?

In general, I'm thinking about hacking biological systems (or, hacking DNA). This is still a pretty niche area, but is becoming more popular...

Rather than trying to explain it myself, there is a pretty good video at http://diybio.org/about/ (4 min) which discusses some areas of research/experiments/etc. Make magazine volume 7 (http://makezine.com/07/) contained some good articles, and the current h+ magazine has some related info on "DIY Transhumanism" (http://hplusmagazine.com/magazine).

An overlapping topic is "synthetic biology" which aims at developing a method of engineering biological systems. An annual competition called the iGem competition (International Genetically-Engineered Machines) started at MIT, in which teams build cells containing some useful custom-built biological system. They build these systems by using (or building their own) reusable biological components called "BioBricks" (think capacitor/transistor/attenuator, but biological). The competition was originally only open to institutions, but recently opened to amateur teams (I hear).

I'm a software engineer, and am used to hacking source code. Hacking DNA, though, interests me and is becoming a real option quickly. The learning curve and costs are pretty steep though, and I'm interested in finding other interested parties...

I think Medios has mentioned wanting to do something like this, but I haven't seen him around for a while.

I think medios drives down from St. Cloud or something like that, hopefully he's still paying attention.

I watched a TED presentation on diyBio, interesting ideas.

I think at some point we may start doing presentations from people looking to stimulate interest in a new topic.

It's been my experience that sometimes, a person will end up completely enamored with something through a relatively minor exposure.

Would you be willing to do such a presentation? 10 minutes, broad info on the topic, examples of projects, etc?