Ever wanted to grow your own fuel, food and pharmaceuticals from the comfort of your home? Well, with the Build Your Own Biofactory project you will be able to do just that.









Photo by Waag Society, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0







Through this nine-part project, you will learn how to design, grow and extract biomaterials using only open source hardware that you have built yourself.





Whether you’re interested in producing a new type of biopharmaceutical or even a biofuel, this project will teach you how you can grow biomaterials at home.





For more environmentally conscious makers you can even grow bioplastic filament for 3D printing, so now more waste filament!





The Biofactory project is an educational program created by a research institute in Amsterdam called the Waag Society, who develop creative technology for social innovation.

Biohacking, which is still in its infancy, emerged from a growing trend of non-institutional science and technology development and this project provides aspiring DIY biohackers with all the tools they need to get started.











The project was added to Wevolver by community member Gerrit Niezen after he attended the BioHack Academy course and wanted to share what he’d learned with the wider community.







“Biohackers work alone. We work in groups, in big cities and in small villages. We reverse engineer lab equipment. We genetically engineer bacteria. We hack hardware, software, wetware, and, of course, the code of life. We like to build things. Then we like to take things apart. We make things grow. We make things glow. And we make cells dance.”



- Biologist and Biohacker, Ellen Jorgensen









London BioHackspace are working on an innovative biohacking project called JuicyPrint. The team plans to build a 3D printer that uses fruit juice to produce a bacterial cellulose capable of printing into useful shapes as an exceptionally strong and versatile biopolymer.

G. hansenii (Gluconacetobacter Hansen ii), the bacteria they will be using, can grow on a wide range of substances including brewing waste and tea.

Another incredible feature of bacterial cellulose is that it is biocompatible, meaning it can safely replace part of a living system.

In the near future, this technology could be used in tissue engineering to grow replacement organs. For now, the team plan to insert genes into the bacteria that will enable them to switch cellulose production for 3D printing on or off using light.





London BioHackspace is based in London Hackspace, not far from Wevolver HQ. Their community access lab centers around open source principles and allows anyone the freedom to start projects that would otherwise be impossible.











A simpler project to get started in the world of Biohacking is growing bioluminescent bacterium, also known as ‘glowing germs’.

The bacteria required, Vibrio phosphoreum, can be found in fresh squid and can be extracted by boiling the squid in agar solution, before being transferred to Petri dishes for growth and harvesting!

After this experiment, maybe you’ll want to step things up a gear by splicing the DNA responsible for bioluminescence in your new germ friends straight into your pet dog! That way you’ll never lose him in the dark again. But be warned, it didn’t turn out too well for the scientists at the end of the 2009 movie ’Splice’.





“The personal mission of many biohackers is to tackle human diseases within our lifetime” and to “dramatically extend lifespans.”



- Biohacker, Ryan Bethencourt



It’s also worth noting that Biohacking group Science for the Masses have announced a method to give people temporary night vision by dropping a chemical found in deep-sea fish (Chlorin e6) directly onto their eyes!





Photo by Science for the Masses







Now you have a pretty good reason to start the Build Your Own Biofactory project.



Happy Biohacking!









Sharing open source technology makes collaboration possible and gives anyone access to the knowledge they need to take their ideas further.





Interested in starting a project?





Email me: cameron@wevolver.com





You can also check out projects I’m working on here.





Cameron Norris

Wevolver Community Connector