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HIV AS A MODEL OF BIOSPAM. As HIV continues to mutate to evade immune surveillance and gain an upper hand over its host, it resembles computer spam trying to escape a computer's spam filter. The lessons from HIV strategies have been adapted to design computer spam filters. Spam filters are an artificial immune systems." " http://lnkd.in/d74GgKF View in LinkedIn

DIYbio WANTS DEMOCRATIZED BIOTECH "Cowell is the cofounder of a group called DIYbio. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cowell and his cohorts believe that biology is too important to be left in the hands of experts. By this they mean that the life sciences as practiced by academics, corporations, and the government are hamstrung by politics and bureaucracy in ways that make cumbersome the beneficial applications of the latest life-science discoveries."" " http://lnkd.in/d4ySrU7 View in LinkedIn

FUTURE BIOSPAM. "The more successful the attempts to program DNA as a 2 bit language for engineering biology become the more likely will be the appearance of “bio-spam, bio-spyware, bio-adware” and other bio-nuisances. An unrestricted biohackery scenario could put the health of a biohacker, the community around him or her and the environment under unprecedented risk."" " http://lnkd.in/dncwWnM View in LinkedIn

BIOTECH HACKER SPACE. "Bio, Tech and Beyond intends to “bootstrap” the traditional research model and provide a space for professionals and advanced amateurs to conduct independent research. For a fee that ranges up to $600 a month, they can access equipment and other resources that would usually be inaccessible to an individual. They will also offer classes that range in skill level from student to profesional."" " http://lnkd.in/dihJR8S View in LinkedIn

DNA BIOSPAM is cheap to generate, "potentially making engineered biological spam very common in the future. It could use natural forms of widely propagating genetic information -- viruses, sperm, pollen or seeds. A synthetic batch could blanket the world in months."" " http://lnkd.in/dkjx-Yi View in LinkedIn

DNA HACKING: AKIN TO EARLY COMPUTING HACKING. "And we’re also seeing an explosion in entrepreneurial activity. Just as the Homebrew Computer Club and other garage hackers led to Apple and Microsoft, the biohacker culture is full of similarly ambitious startups, working out of hackerspaces. It’s entirely possible that the next great wave of entrepreneurs will be biologists, not programmers."" " http://lnkd.in/dyAQ-W8 View in LinkedIn

BIOSECURITY is the theme of the next series of blogs; and just as life is programmable, it is also hackable. There are big lessons to be learned from cybersecurity in computing and the internet, and it is inevitable that similar tactics will be employed for malicious ends in hacking life. View in LinkedIn

RISE OF CITIZEN SCIENTIST must be real, since it is a conference topic today. "DIYBio has now become a popular conference topic; it was the topic of the 2010 Humanity+ Summit at Harvard (subtitled "Rise of the Citizen Scientist"), the Outlaw Biology Summit at UCLA and was included in the program of the Open Science Summit 2010 at University of California, Berkeley."" " http://lnkd.in/deKjDju View in LinkedIn

DARPA'S BIODESIGN PROJECT. " ""Darpa is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch ... Darpa also plans to throw $20 million into a new synthetic biology program, and $7.5 million into “increasing by several decades the speed with which we sequence, analyze and functionally edit cellular genomes.”" " http://lnkd.in/ddnPGcY View in LinkedIn

MILITARY EYES OPEN SOURCE AND BIOHACKING. "The (retired) eighth Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff described a potential future of the military that’s founded not only in open source thinking, but in next-generation user interfaces and biohacking straight out of science fiction ... dramatic evolutionary changes could cascade down the entire supply chain of one of the world’s biggest organizations."" " http://lnkd.in/dMjBeYK View in LinkedIn