The Dos and Don'ts of Hacking Your DNA

Yes, there are biology hackers. They're scientists with wet labs who are reverse-engineering the genomes of fruit flies, mice, chimps, and (sometimes) humans. But pretty soon, the neighbor kid is going to be whipping up little half-human, half-possum creatures in her EZ Bake tissue engineering oven. That's why you need to watch MIT biology professor Drew Endy's lecture called "Programming DNA" from the recent Chaos Communications Congress in Berlin.

Endy is devoted to creating an open source bio-hackers community, and he does a great job explaining the biological machines in our bodies, as well as how we can start reprogramming them. Elliot Phillips has posted video of the entire hour-long lecture, which is a hell of a lot more riveting and mind-blowing than most prime-time TV shows. I urge you to check it out. 24c3 Hacking DNA [Hackaday] Image from Patricia Paccinini.