Biopunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life
by Marcus Wohlsen
Current, April 2011
In the 1970s brash, young mavericks like Bill Gates and Apple’s two Steves (Wozniak and Jobs) toiled in their respective garages creating software and hardware that would one day revolutionize society’s relationship with computers—all without the benefit of towering office high-rises or financial backing from investors with bottomless pockets. These days, like-minded hackers inhabit their own crucibles of innovation, but instead of bits and bytes, they tinker with exons and introns. San Francisco–based science writer Marcus Wohlsen peels back the curtain on the world of do-it-yourself researchers in this engaging romp through biology’s underground. Biopunk is a tour that visits the “labs” at the forefront of homegrown biotechnology. For example, readers stop by the kitchen where a pair of biologists launched a cancer-drug company using little more than ziplock bags, a handful of HeLa cells, and ...
