Bio-hacking with Javascript

Last weekend, I attended my first biohackathon! It was hosted by Stanford BIOME, a student group dedicated to helping Stanford students engage in bio-hacking projects in ways such as funding projects, providing resources, and hosting events like this one.

What is bio-hacking? It encompasses a wide variety of subjects, including, for example, coming up with new ideas and innovations in biology, or combining biology and computer science. People presented projects such as ways to better detect osteoperosis, examining the ethics of bio-hacking in general, discussing how to encrypt DNA if it is used for information storage, and ways to make technological platforms to better help those affected by sexual assault. You can see that this includes a wide range of topics!

The topic I was working on, though, was on the Interactive Online Biology website developed by the The Riedel-Kruse Lab at Stanford. What is "Interactive Online Biology"? It's what you get when you put together technologies used in biology, the power of the internet, and scientists. Basically, it is a biology cloud experimentation lab with a Javascript API to control four lights and view some Euglena from a microscope real-time; so you can run a biology experiment online from anywhere in the world!

The challenge, then, was to see what could be done with the Javascript API to extend the program. In 24 hours, I developed an interactive histogram that showed the distribution of all the bacteria's rotations in real-time, as well as four sliders that let the user control the lights by just clicking on the canvas.

It was fun to work with this API -- and thanks to this hackathon, I have the opportunity to help work on this tool in the future! That just comes to say -- the intersection between fields is getting more and more important. One may be pressured to solely specialize in one field; but often, the interdisciplinary fields are the ones that herald the greatest discoveries and advancements. After all, many established fields of study we have right now -- from biochemistry to biophysics to biocomputation to quantum chemistry -- originally started out just as people who learned about multiple fields of study and then applied their knowledge in novel ways.

So the greatest lesson I've learned is: don't be afraid to explore! That's why I've made it a point to take advantage of the courses here at Stanford, from liberal arts courses through the SLE program to taking language classes in Sanskrit, in addition to STEM or CS courses. It is valuable to get different perspectives on the same topic, or get exposed to new topics and paradigms altogether, by taking different courses in different departments in college, taking an online MOOC, or reading about topics that interest you online, no matter what stage it is in your life. You'll see that it's worth it!

Learn more about the lab at https://web.stanford.edu/group/riedel-kruse/research_T2.html .

Learn more about BIOME at https://stanfordbiome.org/ .