Is anyone in the Hackteria network interested in collaborating with the International Open Insulin project? I (Rachel from Hackuarium) have been interacting with them for some time now, since our biohack meet up where we ‘live streamed’ Anthony, their founder, about ideas to do multi-center experiments with their favorite insulin expressing constructs (both yeast and bacterial versions) and see how reproducible and reliable the production could be. Ideally, people here in Switzerland would be doing experiments in parallel (by a defined protocol, with the same constructs) with labs in the States and in Australia (and ?)…
Recently, Urs and Marc have been talking about their new P1 status, and Hackuarium still has not really jumped into the synthetic bio projects that were under discussion, so this note is just to test the waters.
Who is interested?
( To note: If this is to be of any utility, getting a collaboration going with someone with access to HPLC for purification would be another important consideration. )
I’m interested!
What do you mean by “access” to HPLC specifically?
I’m retired, in central U.S., with a small home lab with a bioreactor.
I experiment with yeast and bacteria, mostly for homebrewing.
I also have Type 2 diabetes (although I don’t use insulin any longer since learning about ketogenic diet)… so I’m motivated to learn ! ( would like to be able to actually drink my beer someday ,-)
I am learning about synthetic biology and light sheet microscopy and I’m a ‘burner’ (Black Rock style, that is.
cool!
interested to hear about your light sheet experiences, too.
For the insulin project, maybe his-tag purification (with magnet, rather than hplc) would be enough for initial tests.
but, hplc might be better!
Do you have experience with that?
I still have no personal experience with their constructs. I proposed parallel expts in a few sites, after I heard someone criticising them (as no where near real production - could be the case, actually…).
There are people in CA and Baltimore at least in the states working on the OpenInsulin project, esp in yeast. I mainly am in touch with them via ‘Messenger’ and they have international group calls on Sundays with zoom. There is also an aussie guy from Sydney who helped for an iGEM ‘winsulin’ construct in bacteria, who may almost be ready to distribute his vector… here is more info on that http://2017.igem.org/Team:Sydney_Australia/Design
They also have some ‘mattermost’ forum, which you might join in.