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Comment by ddxxdd | Hacker News Reader

Before I start binging on every single aspect of your social media, I gotta know:

Have you tried applying your hobby towards reducing the cost of healthcare in America?

Could you somehow make monoclonal antibodies in your petri dishes?

Could you diagnose what kind of flu virus you have?

Because the phrase "self-learning synthetic biology" immediately rang a bell inside my mind that screamed "small business dedicated to cheaper healthcare", and is something that I have considered dedicating my free time towards.

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> Have you tried applying your hobby towards reducing the cost of healthcare in America?

That isn't my stated goal, but I would imagine that sharing how to genetically engineer an incredibly powerful organism to express heterologous genes for less than $3000 in a kitchen lab could open up many possibilities!

> Could you diagnose what kind of flu virus you have?

Is it possible to extract DNA from a bodily fluid, perform PCR and read the sequence results to determine flu variant? I'd have to check on if there is a known DNA sequence that barcodes flu viral variants, but presuming there is, then yes - all of this is possible from a home lab currently.

Yes with a nanopore device that's doable if you take a sample that has a high enough viral charge. You may evem be able to get reads without amplification.

Influenza is an RNA virus so you'll need to reverse transcribe it.

> Have you tried applying your hobby towards reducing the cost of healthcare in America?

This isn't so much a technological problem, but more a politics/incentives issue, as evidenced by the comparably lower cost of healthcare in Europe. Startups might be able to make small reductions in the cost, but truly solving the issue requires re-organising the entire healthcare system.

> Could you somehow make monoclonal antibodies in your petri dishes?

This wouldn't be particularly useful. In order to use it in humans, you need a ton of quality control and regulatory approvals, and this is where a lot of the manufacturing cost crops up.

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