Hackers of DOOM?
Do-it-yourself gene editing is no longer science fiction
As a teenager, Keoni Gandall had a cutting-edge research laboratory in his bedroom in Huntington Beach, Calif. While his friends were buying video games, he acquired more than a dozen pieces of equipment — a transilluminator, a centrifuge, two thermocyclers — in pursuit of a hobby that once was the province of Ph.D.’s in institutional labs.
“I just wanted to clone DNA using my automated lab robot and feasibly make full genomes at home,” he said.
Gandall was far from alone. In the past few years, hobbyists, amateur geneticists, students — so-called biohackers — have taken gene editing into their own hands.
As the equipment becomes cheaper and the expertise in gene-editing techniques more widely shared (the most popular editing tool being Crispr-Cas9), citizen-scientists are attempting to re-engineer DNA in surprising ways.
Until now, the work has amounted to little more than do-it-yourself misfires. A year ago, a biohacker injected himself at a conference with modified DNA that he hoped would make him more muscular. (It did not.)
Earlier this year, at Body Hacking Con in Austin, Texas, a biotech executive injected himself with what he hoped would be a herpes treatment. (Verdict: No.) His company already had livestreamed a man injecting himself with a home-brewed treatment for HIV. (His viral load increased.)
In a recent interview, Gandall, now 18 and a research fellow at Stanford University, said he wants to ensure open access to gene-editing technology, believing future biotech discoveries will come from the least expected minds. He shares a house in Palo Alto with three nonbiologists, who don’t much notice that DNA is cloned in the corner of his bedroom.
But he is quick to acknowledge that the do-it-yourself genetics revolution could go catastrophically wrong. The most
pressing worry is that someone somewhere will use the spreading technology to create a bioweapon.
HORSEPOX
Already a research team at the University of Alberta has re-created from scratch an extinct relative of smallpox, horsepox, by stitching together fragments of mail-order DNA — in just six months for about $100,000 — without a glance from law enforcement officials.
The team bought overlapping DNA fragments from a commercial company. Once the researchers glued the full genome together and introduced it into cells infected by another type of poxvirus, the cells began to produce infectious particles.
To some experts, the experiment nullified decades of debate over whether to destroy the world’s two remaining smallpox remnants — at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and at a research center in Russia — since it proved that scientists who want to experiment with the virus can create it themselves.
The study’s publication in the journal PLOS One included an in-depth description of the methods used and — most alarming to Gregory D. Koblentz, the director of the biodefense graduate program at George Mason University — a series of new tips and tricks for bypassing roadblocks.
“Sure, we’ve known this could be possible,” Koblentz said. “We also knew North Korea could someday build a thermonuclear weapon, but we’re still horrified when they actually do it.”
Experts urged the journal to cancel publication of the article, one calling it “unwise, unjustified and dangerous.” But the study’s lead researcher, David Evans, a virologist at the University of Alberta, said he had alerted several Canadian government authorities to his poxvirus venture, and none had raised an objection.
Many experts agree that it would be difficult for amateur biologists to design a killer virus on their own. But as more hackers trade computer code for the genetic kind, and as their skills become increasingly sophisticated, health security experts fear that the potential for abuse is growing.
“To unleash something deadly, that could really happen any day now — today,” said George Church, a researcher at Harvard and a leading synthetic biologist. “The pragmatic people would just engineer drug-resistant anthrax or highly transmissible influenza. Some recipes are online.”
Church added, “Anyone who does synthetic biology should be under surveillance, and anyone who does it without a license should be suspect.”
PRIVATE INVESTMENTS
Authorities in the United States have been hesitant to undertake actions that could squelch innovation or impinge on intellectual property. The laws that cover biotechnology have not been updated significantly in decades, forcing regulators to rely on outdated frameworks to govern new technologies.
The cobbled-together regulatory system, with multiple agencies overseeing various types of research, has gaps.
Academic researchers undergo strict scrutiny when they seek federal funding for “dual-use research of concern”: experiments that, in theory, could be used for good or ill. But more than half of the nation’s scientific research and development is funded by nongovernmental sources.
In 2013, a quest to create a glowing plant via genetic engineering drew almost half a million dollars through Kickstarter, the crowdfunding website.
“There really isn’t a national governance per se for those who are not federally or government funded,” said William So, a biological countermeasures specialist at the FBI.
Instead, So said, the agency relies on biohackers themselves to sound the alarm regarding suspicious behavior.
“I do believe the FBI is doing their best with what they have,” said Dr. Thomas V. Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore. “But if you really want to do this, there isn’t a whole lot stopping you.”
The FBI has befriended white-hat biohacking labs, among them Genspace in New York. Behind an inconspicuous steel door on a gritty, graffiti-lined street, biohackers-in-training — musicians, engineers, retirees — gather for crash courses in genetic engineering.
Participants in “Biohacker Boot Camp” learn basic skills to use in homegrown genetics projects, such as concocting algae that glows.
“The double helix is the most iconic image of the 20th century, perhaps rivaled only by the mushroom cloud,” the boot camp’s leader, Michael Flanagan, said to a recent class.
Genspace’s entryway resembles a college dorm room, complete with sagging couch, microwave, mini-fridge. But the lab is palatial: two stories of white brick walls, industrial kitchen counters marked with dry-erase notes, shelves towering with glassware and reagents.
NOT UNDERGROUND
It’s a significant upgrade for Genspace. Daniel Grushkin, a founder, used to host bacterial experiments in his living room over pizza and beer.
The group later moved into a rental space for creatives — roboticists, organic fashion designers, miniature-cupcake makers — and constructed a makeshift lab using old patio screen doors. Grushkin reached out to the FBI. “People might be calling you because we are nonscientists doing science in a busted-up old building,” he recalled telling FBI agents. “But we aren’t a meth lab, and we aren’t bioterrorists.”
Grushkin has become a trailblazer in biohacking risk management. He has posted community guidelines, forbidden infectious agents in the lab, and accepted a grant of almost $500,000 to design security practices for some four dozen similar laboratories across the country.
Most of them report not having heard so much as a greeting from the FBI. At many, the consequence for breaking safety guidelines is simply the loss of membership — leaving the perpetrator to experiment in isolation, but still among thousands of enthusiasts huddled online in Facebook groups, email listservs and Reddit pages.
Many find their inspiration in Josiah Zayner, a NASA scientist turned celebrity biohacker who straps a GoPro camera to his forehead and streams experiments on himself from his garage. He’s the man who tried to make his muscles bigger.
“This is just normal Scotch packing tape,” Zayner, chief executive of a biohacking startup called The Odin, told his YouTube audience one summer night, muttering expletives as he stripped the top layer of skin from his forearm. “This is Day 1 of my experiment to genetically engineer myself.”
Zayner later conceded that among his biohacking followers, an accident — not a premeditated offense — was conceivable.
“I guess I can see why they don’t let the entire public have access to Ebola,” he said.
Even Zayner is apprehensive of the movement he helped begin; he plans to include live frogs in The Odin’s DIY-Crispr kits to encourage his followers to experiment on animals instead of themselves — or others.
“I have no doubt that someone is going to get hurt,” he said. “People are trying to one-up each other, and it’s moving faster than any one of us could have ever imagined — it’s almost uncontrollable. It’s scary.”
ARMS RACE
If nefarious biohackers were to create a biological weapon from scratch, they could begin with some online shopping.
A site called Science Exchange, for example, serves as a Craigslist for DNA, connecting almost anyone with online access and a valid credit card to companies that sell cloned DNA fragments.
Biohackers will soon be able to forgo these companies altogether with an all-in-one desktop genome printer: a device much like an inkjet printer that employs the letters AGTC — genetic base pairs — instead of the color model CMYK.
A similar device already exists for institutional labs: BioXp 3200 sells for about $65,000. But at-home biohackers can start with DNA Playground from Amino Labs, an Easy-Bake genetic oven that costs less than an iPad, or The Odin’s CRISPR gene-editing kit for $159.