When I began researching bio I was in 7th grade and I had to ship the DNA transformation kit I wanted to use to my classroom just to get it. Then, lacking tools and experience I began DIYbiology, which my projects there landed me a place at a research lab at UCI

What I noticed is the DIYbio community was made of mostly tinkers and people that where into hardware and software, but there was very few that worked with wetware. While the amount of projects for common lab tools are abundant, I found that actual DNA parts and bacterial strains still need to be obtained by outside organizations, and these will only ship to businesses and schools

There needs to be more wetware in DIYbio

This is where I want my project to try and help fill the gap. Right now I am creating biobrick compatible plasmids that will be under GNU public or Creative Commons license, but in addition to this I want to be able to buy materials to make protocols and strains that will be easier to use for DIYbiologists

I want to

1) Make a strain of Bacillus that can uptake DNA from plasmids very easily under a sucrose promoter

2) Make a strain of Bacillus that uses negative selection for easy transformation without antibiotics

3) Make protocols for the transformations and make them openly available

4) Test using a single PCR reaction to integrate proteins for expression in Bacillus

4) Test remake and optomize E coli transformation

If I complete these goals with money to spare, I will use any leftovers to spend on a few other ideas I have such as

1) Expressing all BioBrick enzymes in Bacillus for secretion and easy purification

2) Modifying CRISPR tracrRNA/ repeats for easier usage using negative selection

3) Make easy to use transcriptional regulator Cas9s

3) Distributing strains produced to anyone who wants it for free

4) Making more cool easy to use, open DNA plasmids and devices!

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at Koeng101@gmail.co