A presentation to the Nanaimo Makerspace in Dec 2015

1. Biohacking
DEC. 2015
MAKERSPACE.CA

2. Agenda
▪ Two historical roots
▪ Human performance enhancement
▪ Genetic engineering
▪ The two are meeting today
▪ Futures
▪ Longevity
▪ Human intelligence enhancement
▪ Designer babies
▪ The role of the hackerspace

3. Human Performance Enhancement
▪ Buttermind – Seth Roberts
▪ http://quantifiedself.com/2011
/01/results-of-the-buttermind-
experiment/
Chlorophyll eyes – Gariel Licina
http://nerdist.com/chlorophyll-eye-drops-turned-
this-biohacker-into-riddick/
RFID implants – Zoltan Istvan
http://www.techinsider.io/presidential-candidate-
zoltan-istvan-gets-an-rfid-chip-implant-2015-9

4. Human Performance Enhancement
Northpaw
http://sensebridge.net/projects/northpaw/
OpenBCI - http://www.openbci.com/
tDCS – transcranial direct current stimulation

5. Genetic Engineering
▪ Easiest to start with bacteria
▪ Yeast is also possible
▪ iGEM - http://igem.org/

6. Genetic Engineering

7. Genetic Engineering
▪ Safety categories and legalities
▪ Safety Category One
▪ Known organisms with no risk to environmental release or human
health
▪ Most iGEM projects can fall in here
▪ Will be regulated in 2016
▪ Safety Category Two
▪ Environmental sampling and cultures
▪ Non-attenuated E. coli, S. aureus, etc.
▪ http://canadianbiosafetystandards.collaboration.gc.ca/index-
eng.php

8. Genetics and health
▪ 23andme
▪ Public genome project – $1K genome for purchase
▪ Ubiome, SecondGenome, American Gut, etc.
▪ Look at American Gut results, Ubiome
▪ Promethease
▪ That year I gave my sister the gift of Alzheimers
▪ Look at promethease results
▪ Arivale – Lee Hood, Institute for Systems Biology
▪ Review Arivale results
▪ MTHFR in promethease

9. Modifying Genomes
● Chromosomal DNA editing
● Similar to zinc fingers and TALENs, but RNA
● Already in the hackerspaces! Kind of. (BioCurious, AddGene)

10. Reading and writing genes
Writing is getting rapidly cheaper,
currently about 25 cents per
base. Twist is in alpha on a
scalable silicone synthesis
platform at 10 cents a base. They
hope to be at 2 cents a base in 2
years (That’s still $64 million per
human genome, though.)

11. Futures: longevity
▪ Methuselah Mouse Prize
▪ Supercentenarians -
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.
0112430
▪ Caloric restriction
▪ Metformin and rapamycin

12. Futures: intelligence
▪ Beijing Genomics Institute
▪ 25% of the world’s sequencing capacity
▪ Whole cities devoted to biomedical research
▪ Cognitive Genomics
▪ https://www.cog-genomics.org/
▪ 5 year program to sequence 10,000 people to determine genetic
correlates of intelligence
▪ Into their 2nd year and accelerating
▪ Postulate 100 genes most relevant to intelligence, deleterious
mutations are like sand in the machine
▪ If all 100 pointed in most favourable direction see 15 SD enhancement
▪ 1 SD of IQ is 15 IQ points, therefore engineered human intelligence of
over 300 IQ

13. Futures: designer babies
▪ Moratorium on CRISPR work on germline in humans
▪ Simply don’t know enough yet
▪ Regulation in Canada and the US is fairly restrictive
▪ This is an intelligence arms race…
▪ If in a generation we have not permitted human genetic
modification and other places have, will we be competitive or
obsolete?

14. Role of the hackerspaces
▪ Education
▪ Can’t stop learning when you leave school anymore
▪ Push the envelope
▪ Imagine the future, push our laws and society towards the light
▪ Reskill
▪ Biology as information science
▪ Grassroots
▪ What would you like to see engineered? I bet it’s not big agriculture and
pesticide resistance…
▪ Businesses
▪ There’s a shift underway in how businesses are started and run, think small
▪ https://agenda.weforum.org/podcast/podcast-the-fourth-industrial-
revolution/

15. What will you make?
What will you make of yourself?
DEREKJA@MAKERSPACE.CA