CCL Plant Bio: A space for plant biotech in the Bay

Around February 2016, I came across a WSJ article about a guy named Sebastian Cocioba, a self-taught biohacker in New York. It explained how Sebastian was doing plant genetics and other Dexter’s Lab type stuff. From his bedroom.

When I read this, I was at the inflexion point of my own growing passion for the Plantae kingdom — aiming to take the knowledge I’d acquired over the past few months about plants and apply it in a fun, meaningful way. Gardening is great, but there are limits to the potential. I needed to take things to the cellular and molecular level.

So I shot him an email. “Hey Sebastian, Ran across your info from a WSJ article about biohacking and wanted to get in touch. I’m a software designer in San Francisco looking to get into genetically modifying plants as a hobby…”

He responded that same day, and offered to teach me anything I needed to know via Facebook chat. All he asked in return was that I pay it forward. This was my intro to the world of biohacking.

Fast forward to today.

Lacking the expensive resources and space to carry out these projects in my apartment, I wound up joining a local community lab, Counter Culture Labs. It was at CCL where I started the Plant Bio Group, with the goal of creating a space for myself or others to learn and experiment with plants.

Our goals from the outset have been threefold:

1. To inspire a deeper appreciation for the plant kingdom.
2. To provide an affordable and easy way to learn and teach plant biotech methods.
3. To enable meaningful contributions toward the plant biotech domain.

When I tell people this, their first question is often the same. Why? Why mess with the unadulterated botanical gifts of nature, locked into a stable but slowly changing equilibrium for millions of years? These are questions that need to be considered for everything biotech, and aren’t unique to this field.

I answer broad questions like this by first encouraging an ongoing discussion. There are rarely easy answers in life sciences and thus no question should be discouraged, brushed off, or downplayed.

Second, people must realize that the horse is out of the gate with biotechnology, and it will only continue to grow in popularity and importance over the coming years. Thus there’s a momentous moral obligation to make sure that it’s done right.

As a third answer, I’ve laid out a set of three simple ethical boundaries to define our activities, and invite any other groups to adopt them as well:

1. Reversible. Projects should aim to avoid uncontrollable spread of their outputs. There are many ways of doing this, which I’ll elaborate on at some point in the future.
2. Non-Harmful. In the spirit of John Stuart Mill, nothing produced should by intent or accident cause harm to another person.
3. Open Source. Projects should be open to the community. There’s a lot to this, but two of the primary drivers are to enable open discourse and contribute back to the community. The biggest challenges with this are with regards to the tools — some of the best tools are invitation-only, which walks a blurry line. We’re toying with Slack, but don’t feel great about it.

I expect these to evolve over time, but it’s important to have as a guiding light for any activities we engage in. Please share any feedback or thoughts.

So, what are these projects?

Here are a few of the main ones, but we have many smaller ones in progress and in the pipelines:

• Tissue Culture Lessons (and more!)
  Tissue culture is the most common and most in-demand activity in plant biotechnology. We’re sharpening our own skills at this so we can create an open space to teach and conduct tissue culture. Throughout 2017, we’ll be hosting workshops to share this potential with the larger community, among other plant bio lessons.
• Peacock Tobacco
  Our most active project right now. We’re aiming to impart iridescence into tobacco leaves by transplanting an organelle called an “iridoplast” from some begonia species into tobacco. One of the coolest things about this project is the creation of a new protocol that avoids sexual transmission of genetic changes, in accordance with our ethical boundaries.
• Phytoremediation
  Thanks to human activity, modern soil is contaminated with boatloads of heavy metals, salt, and other contaminants. Fortunately, there are plants out there that can uptake and store those contaminants, in a controlled manner (very important), after which those plants can be safely disposed of. We’re still figuring out which elements to aim for — salt, lead, etc. Flint, Michigan, anyone?

So if you’re a biologist, microbiologist, mycologist, chemist, geneticist, artist, dentist, designer, musician, engineer, or whatever else, come join us as we push ourselves towards the limits of plant biotech.