Build a mutant in your garage

[Kai]

Frankly, at this point I have no reason to think it's anything but kind of a cute hobby for bored rich people who want to think they're fancy.

Superempowerment? Ha.

At the moment it is.  However they don't have to be that rich, it's a cute hobby for upper middle class people and rather quickly getting cheaper.

I really do think that biohacking at a scary level will be possible within a decade or so.

I think you're forgetting about the investment of time.

The upper-middle-class have jobs.

Consider how much amateur astronomers have done for astronomy, working late at night on weekends and even weeknights, taking long trips for good viewing, buying scopes and other devices.

It's the same sort of thing. I could have a PCR/gel sequencing wetlab running for a lot less than you might think. Sure, it will be slow going, but spending several nights a week working would eventually lead to skill and knowledge, which would allow pressing forward. Same as astronomy takes a great deal of time staring up at the sky night after night, looking for particular phenomena. Then, after several years, you spot a new asteroid, or discover a star that varies in brightness but isn't cataloged as variable.

Think of all the people who work during the day and yet find time to devote to their consuming passionate hobbies.

They're brewing beer and making yogurt.

I dunno, I'm skeptical.

If you look around google you'll find it's a whole lot more than microorganism culture. And as the technology becomes cheaper it's becoming increasingly feasable.

I mean, PCR opened the way for very cheap research. If you purchase DNApolymerase and the right primer and put them in a batch of nucleic acids, you can amplify a gene to high enough levels just by taking it through a series of alternating cool and hot water baths. The hot water pulls the two stranded DNA apart. Cooling allows the primer to bind and the polymerase to function. The number of double strand DNA increases exponentially, till you have a massive amount of a single gene. Chain termination method of sequencing then just uses an electric diode fitted to a gel which pulls the lengths along, longer chains traveling a shorter distance. If you put florescent dye for each of the basepairs in four rows, then what comes out is essentially a UV florescing chart of the sequence.

And this is the old way. Newer sequencing equipment is faster, easier to use and becoming more available every year. Want to insert transposable elements? There's a kit for that. Most of these tools are not that expensive, can be obtained online or through catalogs. Sure, it takes skill and dedication (and attention to detail; contamination is the biggest issue with getting clean results), but I wouldn't be surprised if in 20-30 years lay hobbyists are making discoveries.