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Comment by Lambdanaut | Hacker News Reader

I think the biggest problem with the homebrew biotech world right now is that even with the labs opening up, there's still such a barrier to entry.

There's a "hello world" to biotech, no doubt; extract some DNA from strawberries or explore the tiny world with a consumer microscope.

But then what? There doesn't seem to be much potential mid-tier work to be done in biotech. In contrast with software where there is a very visible ladder you can climb.

Most of the biotech work seems to be in research, not development (unless you own a huge firm)

Where does one go after they've exhausted the basics, and how can you make money off of this stuff without working in a expensive lab for somebody else?

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I think your points are good ones, and that today's landscape basically requires access to a lab if a biotech product isn't software or a medical device. So for "homebrewers", as you say, it can be challenging to get started.

But there is still a desire to develop biological therapies and tools and businesses around them; I think it stems from the close ties --almost symbiotic ties -- between biotech and academia. It reminds me of the earlier days of computing, where those with big ideas were either working at an academic institution or closely associated with it in some way.

If you are affiliated with an institution, the barrier to start working on something "homebrewed" can be quite low. There has been a great upswing of biotech incubator spaces in the past 5-10 years; I presume this has to be partly driven by demand.

Well yes, but there is actually a huge intersection with computer science - bioinformatics. Since bioinformatics only requires data, which is much easier to get, and programming/statistics/data mining skills, the barrier to entry is lower than wet lab work. (When I say much easier to get, I'm talking about publicly available data, not creating your own data.)

I argue mostly but there are still some exceptions:

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/27680/...

http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2009/02/06/sticking-it-to-the...

Also nowadays there are biotech incubators with all the basic equipment where you can rent a bench for around $2k/month.

http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v19/n12/full/nm1213-1556.ht... [Paywall]

No doubt you need investors to get started and arguably some technology. Or, you can start in the service sector and license someone else's tech.

I'm hopeful that Transcriptic[0] will be able to make a dent.

[0] http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/18/aws-for-life-science-with-4...

Biotechnology is the use of living systems and organisms to develop or make useful products, or "any technological application that uses biological systems, living organisms or derivatives thereof, to make or modify products or processes for specific use" (UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Art. 2).[1] Depending on the tools and applications, it often overlaps with the (related) fields of bioengineering and biomedical engineering.

For thousands of years, humankind has used biotechnology in agriculture, food production, and medicine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotechnology

It seems to me any farmer or homemaker can do "biotech." The question I have is not how can it be done but how do you market it? It seems to me the issue is one of getting taken seriously. The barrier to "entry" is not that high. You can do "biotech" in your kitchen or backyard. But finding a way to reach consumers, finding a way to monetize it, finding a way to convince people you aren't one of those folks wearing a tinfoil hat with a diagnosis of "batshit insane" -- those are challenges.

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