Biohacking - An Overview (6 Videos) + Open Biohacking Toolkit

The following is an excellent introductory material in 6 videos on biohacking as well as molecular genetics by Dr. Chris Siedel.

Biological systems are large assemblies of parts that function together following rules of basic chemistry. As systems, they can be studied, modified, and engineered for novel purposes. DNA molecules contain the information used to encode living systems, and methods exist for discovering and manipulating this information. This talk will cover the basic components of biological systems, including how DNA can be modified to make new proteins or genetically modified organisms, such as fluorescent mice, therapeutic viruses, or bacteria that eat explosives or smell like bananas.

I highly recommend this video series on biohacking.

Open biohacking toolkit
The open biohacking toolkit by Bryan Bishop includes information on do-it-yourself (DIY) experimentalism in biotech, science, pharmacology, biogerontology, fighting diseases, or making new genes to do interesting things. In the words of the author, “Join the fight against cancer, against all sorts of disease! Or would you rather see some glowing bacterium, get your own ecoli farm set up to amaze your friends? This open, free synthetic biology kit contains all sorts of information from across the web on how to do it: how to extract and amplify DNA, cloning techniques, making DNA by what’s known as oligonucleotides, and all sorts of other tutorials and documents on techniques in genetic engineering, tissue engineering, synbio (synthetic biology), stem cell research, SCNT, evolutionary engineering, bioinformatics, etc. And since the project is open, it’s free for you to revise or share your experiences, or even share your genes (got anything cool?). The more eyes, the better– you can’t ignore these awesome possibilities (or even the not-so-cool ones*).”.

You can download it here.