---
title: "Do-it-yourself biology"
chunk: 2/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do-it-yourself_biology"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:13:30.373685+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Restricted access to medical care and medicine has pushed biohackers to start experimenting in medically related fields. The Open Insulin project aims to make the recombinant protein insulin more accessible by creating an open source protocol for expression and purification. Other experiments that have involved medical treatments include a whole body microbiome transplant and the creation of open source artificial pancreases for diabetics, such as OpenAPS, Loop and AndroidAPS. Many initiatives have taken place using DIY Biology to help people medically during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the Rapid Deployment Vaccine Collaborative (RaDVaC), which is a group made up of Harvard and MIT scientists who synthesized and researched a COVID-19 vaccine using their own personal lab. Other laboratory spaces created medical-grade face shields and other COVID-19 relief mechanisms in response to the pandemic.

=== Implants ===
Grinders are a subculture of biohackers that focus on implanting technology or introducing chemicals into the body to enhance or change their bodies' functionality.
Some biohackers can now sense which direction they face using a magnetic implant that vibrates against the skin.

=== Art ===
In 2000, controversial and self-described "transgenic artist" Eduardo Kac appropriated standard laboratory work by biotechnology and genetics researchers in order to both utilize and critique such scientific techniques. In the only putative work of transgenic art by Kac, the artist claimed to have collaborated with a French laboratory (belonging to the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique) to procure a green-fluorescent rabbit: a rabbit implanted with a green fluorescent protein gene from a type of jellyfish [Aequorea victoria] in order for the rabbit to fluoresce green under ultraviolet light. The claimed work came to be known as the "GFP bunny", and which Kac called Alba. This claim by Kac has been disputed by the scientists at the lab who noted that they had performed exactly the same experiment (i.e., the insertion of the jellyfish GFP protein-coding gene) on numerous other animals (cats, dogs, etc.) previously and did not create Alba (known to the researchers only as "Rabbit Number 5256") under the direction of Kac. The laboratory consequently kept possession of the transgenic rabbit which it had created and funded and the "transgenic art" was never exhibited at the Digital Avignon festival [2000] as intended. Kac—claiming that his rabbit was the first GFP bunny created in the name of Art—used this dispute to popularize the issue as one of disguised censorship by launching a "Free Alba" campaign. A doctored photo of the artist holding a day-glow-green tinted rabbit appears on his website. The members of the Critical Art Ensemble have written books and staged multimedia performance interventions around this issue, including The Flesh Machine (focusing on in vitro fertilisation, surveillance of the body, and liberal eugenics) and Cult of the New Eve (In order to analyze how, in their words, "Science is the institution of authority regarding the production of knowledge, and tends to replace this particular social function of conventional Christianity in the west").
Heather Dewey-Hagborg is an information artist and biohacker who uses genomic DNA left behind by people as a starting  point for creating lifelike, computer-generated, 3-D portraits.