Welcome

I've been interested in bio-hacking since 1995, when I did a short contract for the Gene Expression Group of the Plant Biotechnology Institute, part of Canada's National Research Council, while I was attending the University of Saskatchewan. I know, a bit of a mouthful. I just did some database development for them in Delphi, but was pretty fascinated with the potential of the technology.

I've occasionally had my interest rekindled, but there was always something to prevent me from going further with it. A large part was just that the technology required for anything interesting seemed just a little out of reach. Kitchen DNA extraction with shampoo and a salad spinner (which I saw at CodeCon a few years back) was neat, but the question of where to go from there loomed. A few things have recently. The technology has gotten cheaper ($200 PCR machines on eBay) and I've also been doing a lot of microcontroller work with the arduino platform, so some of it just seems more practical as a result. I'm also dating a biochemist, so I have someone to harass with dumb questions. ;)

I'm starting to write up some of what I'm learning at the BioPunx wiki and here. I welcome collaboration.