On a Saturday afternoon, you’ll see the typical sights as you drive down most suburban streets: a child riding a bike, someone washing a car, and a garage door that is partially open and reveals a workbench. If you take a closer look at some of those workbenches, you’ll notice that the tools have changed. In addition to the paint cans and wrenches, there’s a thermocycler that was salvaged from a university dumpster, a centrifuge that was purchased used on eBay, and perhaps a mini-fridge filled with petri dishes rather than beer.
This is the unglamorous reality of do-it-yourself biohacking, a movement that has been simmering in American garages for almost 20 years. Contrary to what headlines sometimes imply, it is not dramatic. There is no theatrical mad-scientist behavior. Patience, trial and error, and a lot of failed gels under a piece of black cloth taped over a window to block light are the main strategies.
Access is what has changed. Once costing a university department tens of thousands of dollars, lab equipment can now be found for a few hundred dollars. CRISPR gene-editing kits are available online for less than $200. Instead of purchasing an open-source PCR machine, a hobbyist with a soldering iron and a little perseverance can construct one. Once determined by postgraduate degrees and institutional funding, the barrier to entry is now primarily determined by curiosity and a willingness to make repeated mistakes.
It’s important to remember that this is nothing new. Years ago, community labs like BioCurious in California and Genspace in Brooklyn helped legitimize the concept by providing equipment and shared space for amateur scientists rather than requiring everyone to work in their own kitchens. However, rather than taking the place of those community spaces, the garage version—solitary, improvised, and frequently unregulated—has expanded alongside them. It has an almost antiquated feel to it, evoking the same spirit that transformed garages into the birthplaces of personal computers decades ago.
This work is being done by a strange mix of people. Some are qualified scientists who chose to continue working despite not having a university affiliation because they were unable to secure academic positions. Others are artists, engineers, or just restless tinkerers who became interested in the true appearance of a strand of DNA in the correct light. They all agree that practicing science shouldn’t require an institutional badge; in theory, this idea feels democratic, but in reality, it can be challenging.
It does become intricate. The majority of garage experiments are low-risk, almost amusing tasks like checking food for incorrectly labeled fish DNA or experimenting with fluorescent proteins in bacteria. However, in careless hands, the same tools that enable those projects could be used for something more dangerous. Although enforcement is still uneven and primarily reactive rather than proactive, regulators have taken notice. The best way to oversee science conducted behind closed garage doors as opposed to within an organization with an ethics board is still up for debate.
The true inventiveness on show is more difficult to ignore. People are creating actual tools, producing actual data, and sometimes making unexpected discoveries. It’s unclear if this will remain a side project or eventually lead to something more significant, like diagnostics, farming, or even medicine. However, it is difficult not to find it at least somewhat fascinating to watch a movement based on curiosity and inexpensive used equipment gradually professionalize itself, garage by garage.
