Not much new about this -- the "make this strand of e. coli flouresce in the presence of certain sugars" experiment was being done by (high school) AP bio classes ten years ago. (I know, I did it. Bloody things died on me, but my lab partner got it to work.) Since you're not doing original research it takes all the biomedical engineering knowledge that growing a pack of sea monkeys takes -- can you follow a set of direction? Good, have gene splicing.

The fearmongering about it is similarly blown all out of proportion -- people think that suddenly everything gets more lethal once humans get involved. Oh noes if it isn't "natural" we're one drop away from World War Z. Of course, crossbreeding never really triggered that, selective breeding never really triggered that, and viral infections never really triggered that -- but when its humans messing with genes directly why that is different, they say so right in the Hollywood movies.

She wants to make yogurt bacteria fluoresce in the presence of melamine, which is causing a load of trouble in China right now. That seems not only clever, but commercially viable.

In any case, DIYbio and bio hackers are about bringing the hacking spirit to biology, which right now is very capital intensive. Genetic engineering now is like computing in the late 60s: big mainframes locked inside ivory towers and Fortune 500 companies.

> bio hackers are about bringing the hacking spirit to biology, which right now is very capital intensive.

That's what I thought was noteworthy about it. My wife works in that field, and it's night and day from ours. You have to have millions of dollars to do anything at all, it seems.

"...that drops to 80 degrees below zero, the temperature needed to keep many kinds of bacteria alive."

What kind of bacteria are they referring to?

I would expect they're preserving bacteria at -80 and not growing them at -80. You need very cold temperatures, -80 and storage in liquid nitrogen, to maintain the viability of a bacterial culture during storage.