Hi and welcome to this post which is part of my series on the Sparks exhibition currently hosted at Esplora in Malta until the end of August 2017. You can read the rest of the series by viewing the Sparks category.

The first of the three themes in the Sparks exhibition is DIY Biology.

A metal sign saying "DIY Biology"

When I first heard the term “DIY Biology” I was surprised, partly because DIY is something I associate with physics, and partly because I tend to think of biology as something that just happens, not something a ‘normal’ person can change. So I’ve quite enjoyed exploring this new field.

There are two “stories” in this theme – one is about searching for new antibiotics, and the other is about creating an affordable DNA lab for schools, hobbyists and citizen scientists.

DIY Biology includes working with genetics and molecular biology, and it’s true that this usually involves specialised (very expensive) equipment. Through the two stories, we see two very different approaches – in the first story, Pieter gets around the problem by starting a community lab and building home-made equipment using cheap or salvaged parts, with cheap custom-made laser cut wooden housings. In the second story, we see Bethan and Philip set out to condense the basic equipment of a professional DNA lab into one portable unit, and embark on a quest to manufacture and market it commercially as entrepreneurs.

Like all the “stories” in the exhibition, each of these heavily features people, to emphasise that citizen science, well, starts with a citizen.

Pieter Van Boheemen

Pieter is very active in promoting free and open source technology for citizen scientists to use. He not only runs projects like a community biotechnology lab in Amsterdam, but he also runs lots of activities, events and courses to equip both ‘normal’ people and teachers to design, build and use biotechnology equipment.

This story in the Sparks exhibition talks about one of Pieter’s projects, which is trying to solve the problem of antimicrobial resistance.

Some bacteria are beneficial and even vital to humans (like the ones in our intestines), but some can make us very sick and even kill us. Antibiotics have been vital in fighting bacteria, but the bacteria are evolving and becoming resistant…

Pieter is leading citizen scientists in looking for new antibiotics in plants, using home-made (and therefore cheaper) microscopes, spectrometers and incubators.

I believe we can crowdsource a new antibiotic – Pieter van Boheemen

A hand-made microscope. — A DIY microscope made with laser-cut wooden parts.

Home-made lab instruments — Left to right: Microscope, spectrometer, centrifuge, incubator.

A guide to looking for antibiotics. — A DIY protocol for finding antibiotics.

The second story of the DIY Biology theme is covered in the next post in this series.