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Comment by judegomila | Hacker News Reader

I would also love to see more startups in this area. It would be amazing to open biology to every engineer on the planet. I'm thinking of a arduino like revolution but for biology. Achieving read/write cells for under $1000 on the desktop would open up biology to an entire new set of people. I'm not a biologist, but I'm intrigued by what we can unlock in this field.

OpenPCR is a good example of frugal engineering applied to the space. I hope to see more attempts at making this hardware cheaper and accessible.

Regarding the spec on the Database. User friendliness would be a start, can you throw in what you would want to improve - I'm interested in your ideas?

The company "ion torrent" caught my eye regarding the in vitro DNA sequencing. It disrupts Halcyon Molecular and could cut the cost down even quicker.

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Why are you convinced you need to open biology up to engineers? Is that currently not the case?

The fact is you really can't do much with a PCR machine. Sure, you can identify your friends boogers. But it only reduces one tiny aspect of overall cost. Add a centrifuge, a flow cytometer, a gel box, some incubators, and then maybe you have a functional 'garage' lab.

But again, you don't achieve much by having immediate in vitro sequencing. Not sure what the point is.

The real barrier then is literally funding and the capacity to do the research. And that's exactly what my startup is doing.

https://www.breakoutlabs.org/about-us.html looks like an interesting entrant into funding early stage research outside academia. Any thoughts on them?

Without revealing too much of what I am doing, this doesn't really solve any existing problems. Honestly, Intellectual Ventures is better than this in that they get straight to the point. They will just buy your IP for some ridiculous amount of money, whether it's from the university or your company.

If you ask a science researcher to be able to do the research outside of his lab, the size of your potential audience falls to fingers on one hand.

At least Bill and Melinda Gates foundation does better in pushing a goal with their own agendas. This seems like an unfocused attempt to throw money into the pit, though money always helps.

So, as a researcher, I've learned that researchers are the best ones who can dictate their own goals. That's freedom that hasn't been seen yet, and there's a very simple solution. Just execution is very difficult.

what are you working on?

> Achieving read/write cells for under $1000 on the desktop would open up biology to an entire new set of people.

Including every random nutter with a grudge against society who wnats to make their own viruses and bacteria. I do not think this is a good idea.

Are you a self-styled prognosticator? Frustrated idea guy?

User friendliness would be a start, can you throw in what you would want to improve - I'm interested in your ideas?

"lookin 4 a technical cofounder"

Re-reading your post, I just realized: did you mean "synthesizer" where you wrote "sequencer"?

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