The reagents on sale mentioned (Taq, antibiotic resistance genes and DNA ladders) are to biotech what solder and resistors are to electronics, i.e. very low value products of no use to the general public.
The real hurdle for true "biohacking" is the cost of laboratory facilities and equipment, which can easily run into a million dollars as soon as high speed centrifuges, -70 C freezers, sterile incubators and hoods, equipment for analysis, certified waste disposal facilities, etc, etc, are taken into account.
Compare this to making an app, which costs mostly the developers time and some hardware she already has lying around.
For one, they should focus on areas where the reagents are not expensive, e.g. identifying novel natural biological extracts with new activities, consumer genetics (as in 23 and me), or areas such as horticulture. They should avoid things like stem cells and drug development (as opposed to discovery).
I make a mutation of enzyme X, then test it. Ok, the procedure works, now let's scale it to 48 mutants. Uh oh, the procedure stopped working at #28. Why? Because the batch number for our competent cells from NEB changed and it no longer accepts our plasmid. (real situation) Etc.
Imagine I want to do a PCR but can't do it myself, I must really a) have no bio facilities to speak of, b) don't know anyone else who does. What am I then going to do with the PCR product? Further, presumably I must also sent you the sample to amplify, and what kind of samples am I likely to have if have no bio facilities?
You might want to read the comments made elsewhere about something similar: http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2014/07/09/outsourced_a...
I mentioned it in #openbazaar on irc, and they seemed interested. Toronto has one of the largest diybio groups in north america, and I've been to a few meetup, so I'd love to help look into it when I'm back in Toronto next week
frankly, I would be thrilled if the nixhe groups of both cryptocurrency and diybio found symbiosis :)
Competent technicians don't grow on trees. You are looking at a salary of 60 kUSD/year + benefits, and then you start running numbers if reagent kits might actually be the cheaper option.
We've taken the approach of working with small manufacturers that already make products that are repackaged and marked up more than 10x.
John (author) is right that there is a huge need for more affordable reagents especially recombinant protein.
Perhaps an ebay-like marketplace with user feedback would be the way to go?
We've actually had extremely few issues with quality (much less than 1%). I've personally used many of our manufacturers in research myself, which helped at the start.
There are start ups collecting user feedback on supplies and we used to have products reviews, but we've run into issues from large competitors making up fictitious reviews (reviews of products we've never sold, etc.)
Right, many manufacturers can only produce 5-10 items at scale and do not have the sales force for any market presence. We are helping them by aggregating their products (currently at 45,000+) to compete with VWR, Fisher and Sigma.
The sad part (why this area needs help) is there is significant savings ordering through us on the exact same item such as:
Greiner CELLSTAR® serological pipette, 10 mL $27 v. $106.60
http://store.p212121.com/serological-pipettes/ http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/sigma/p7615?lang...
Part of the reason that these pricing issues exist is that many universities negotiate from list price instead of absolute price.
For example, give us 40% off of list price instead of asking how much does this actually cost. Fisher will then have insanely high list prices and accounting thinks it is a win while researchers get burned. Researchers can go around purchasing, but often this requires additional paperwork.
Here is a section from a 48 university pool in Ohio, request for proposal asking for percent off of list price (not actual price): https://www.evernote.com/shard/s32/sh/cada2b94-2214-44e9-8d8...
