A Community Bio-Tech Lab Offers a Crash Course in Designing Life — Open to the Public
By Adam Wernick,
PRI
| 06. 05. 2015
Untitled Document
“Scientists in general are awful at communicating their work to the general public,” says Jorgensen, the director of Genspace. “The consumer is already using genetically modified and genetically engineered products in their daily life. So, wouldn't it be nice if the end user were also someone who could have a say about what this technology was used for?“
Genspace, which opened in downtown Brooklyn in 2009, is the world's first community bio-lab. It offers a three-class crash course in synthetic biology to anyone who is interested. It also has a working lab space where the general public is invited to come in and learn how to do genetic science — hands on.
At Genspace, Wetherell experimented with her own DNA. Here her DNA is suspended in an agarose gel that is charged by an electical current that separates the proteins
Credit: Julia Wetherell
For $100 a month, Genspace members have access to the standardized gene sets that are the building blocks of synthetic biology. If that sounds daunting, consider this: Non-scientists make up a big part of...
Related Articles
By Jenny Lange, BioNews | 12.01.2025
A UK toddler with a rare genetic condition was the first person to receive a new gene therapy that appears to halt disease progression.
Oliver, now three years old, has Hunter syndrome, an inherited genetic disorder that leads to physical...
By Grace Won, KQED [with CGS' Katie Hasson] | 12.02.2025
In the U.S., it’s illegal to edit genes in human embryos with the intention of creating a genetically engineered baby. But according to the Wall Street Journal, Bay Area startups are focused on just that. It wouldn’t be the first...
By Pam Belluck and Carl Zimmer, The New York Times | 11.19.2025
Gene-editing therapies offer great hope for treating rare diseases, but they face big hurdles: the tremendous time and resources involved in devising a treatment that might only apply to a small number of patients.
A study published on Wednesday...
Several recent Biopolitical Times posts (1, 2, 3, 4) have called attention to the alarmingly rapid commercialization of “designer baby” technologies: polygenic embryo screening (especially its use to purportedly screen for traits like intelligence), in vitro gametogenesis (lab-made eggs and sperm), and heritable genome editing (also termed embryo editing or reproductive gene editing). Those three, together with artificial wombs, have been dubbed the “Gattaca stack” by Brian Armstrong, CEO of the cryptocurrency company...
