There is much to learn along the road to achieving biological literacy. The conventional approach, taking classes in school, is rather less than ideal. Our objective here is to minimize the pain and maximize the gain, and the fun, along the way. To do that we will put tools for conducting real biological research in the hands of citizen scientists. We believe that equiping a home laboratory, with a view to conducting experiments, is the very best way to achieve biological literacy, one important part of achieving over-all scientific literacy, which in turn is an important part of becoming a civilized human being.
For those with the time, space, patience, and funds a home chemistry lab is the ideal complement to, and starting point for, a home biology lab. Understanding living things in depth today demands a good grasp of the principles of chemistry and molecular biology; and the laboratory methods, procedures, and safety concerns of the chemist are continuous with those of the biologist.
O'Reilly Media has been doing the world of citizen science a vast service for some years now, publishing valuable books across the whole range of science and technology topics. Their guides to doing science experiments at home are subtitled "All Lab, No Lecture" in light of the desire of citizen scientists everywhere to get their hands on tools, and to learn by actually doing (or "making", to use the term popularized by Dale Dougherty, the publisher of "Make" magazine). We very strongly applaud this approach; but there is still much to be said for "lecture" - or for some preliminary reading - so as to provide the necessary context and a deeper understanding.
Fortunately, there have never before been such rich resources for acquiring the necessary background.
Beginning with chemistry as our ideal starting point, we recommend Super Simple Chemistry: The Ultimate Bitesize Study Guide from DK (Dorling-Kindersley). Soon available for use with the book will be a set of companion flash cards.
With this essential background mastered, the citizen scientist is ready to move on to equiping his or her own home chemistry laboratory and doing experiments (though acquiring the background and preparing a lab could certainly also be done concurrently).
All of the requisite tools and materials for a home chemistry lab are described in Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments by Robert Bruce Thompson. The "errata" sheet at the O'Reilly site explains that a kit is available in connection with the book, to make the process of obtaining the necessary lab materials as simple as possible. With these experiments accomplished, the student may appropriatelyconsider himself or herself to be a genuine citizen scientist - and will be ready to move on to acquiring the knowlege needed to do experiments in biology, including molecular biology.
Introductions to Biology
How much preparatory reading is needed here will depend upon how much background the citizen scientist already has, and how current it is. Younger scientists, or those who have forgotten their high school or college biology, may wish to begin with Super Simple Biology: The Ultimate Bitesize Study Guide by "DK" (Dorling Kindersley), in consultation with the Smithsonian.
For more advanced students, the task of reviewing all of the essentials of biology with the utmost clarity is admirably achieved by Lawrence Hunter in his book The Processes of Life. Just 299 pages in length, this compendium nevertheless encompasses the whole range of topics needed for anyone who wishes to understand the essentials of biology, particularly those who wish to go on to study molecular biology or bioinformatics. Particularly valuable here is the evolutionary context Hunter is at pains to provide. The excellent recommendations for supplementary readings will take the student much farther.
Next up, or concurrently, should be Illustrated Guide to Home Biology Experiments, by Robert Bruch Thompson and Barbara Fritchman Thompson. The necessary equipment is again here described for furnishing the home laboratory, but in this context with an emphasis on doing biological experiments.
The work done above will well-prepare the aspiring citizen-scientist for what might come next: mastering synthetic biology. Synthetic biology is to biology as engineering is to physics: that is, it makes use of scientific understanding and scientific principles to create processes beneficial to humanity.
Two excellent paths forward are available here, both of them books (and accompanying labs) offered via O'Reilly: BioBuilder and Zero to Genetic Engineering Hero. Again, there is no reason both couldn't be pursued concurrently, apart, perhaps, from expense; and they could also be pursued consecutively. Indeed, the two books complement each other rather nicely, BioBuilder providing more of an engineering perspective, and ZtGEH providing a better, and more detailed, explanation of how DNA and RNA actually work.
BioBuilder is written by Natalie Kuldell, Rachel Bernstein, Karen Ingram and Kathryn M. Hart. The text is built around conducting five experiments in synthetic biology, but begins by providing some context for this discipline. There is a companion website (https://biobuilder.org), and materials for the labs are available from Ward's Science or Carolina Biological Supply.
Zero to Genetic Engineering Hero is authored by Justin Pahara and Julie Legault. It is true to the "Make" ethos of "No Lecture, All Lab", and jumps right in from the very beginning with an experiment involving the extraction of DNA. It also comes with a companion website (https://www.amino.bio/community), and all materials needed for its experiments can be purchased from: https://www.amino.bio.
DNA and RNA molecules are compendiums of biological information pertaining to the synthesis of proteins. What, exactly, these proteins do in the context of a living organism can be quite difficult to tease out, and it is here that bioinformatics and data science merge with biological investigation. Much of the data science is being done with a tool for statistical analysis known as "R". The full range of tools for doing synthetic biology includes an understanding of programming, statistics, and molecular biology. This is a somewhat daunting prospect; but acquiring this understanding will bring the citizen scientist to the very forefront of what is currently perhaps the most exciting scientific frontier, where new developments occur daily. Many of the most difficult challenges facing humanity can be addressed with synthetic biology.
Those with an interest in pursuing the data science side of biology will need to get up to speed with both statistics and programming in R. A good introduction to the mathematics involved is Statistics: An Introduction Using R by Michael J. Crawley. However, for a more in-depth treatment of the use of R for the biological scientist, see Getting Started With R: An Introduction for Biologists by Beckerman, Childs, and Petchey. This is also probably the single best introduction available for using R.
The educators who have founded the BioBuilder organization have provided links to the RStudio Cloud. For more, please see: https://www.rstudio.com/about/customer-stories/biobuilder/.
R and RStudio (an integrated development environment, or "IDE" for R) are available as free downloads. For R go to: https://www.r-project.org. For RStudio, go to: https://www.rstudio.com.
Direct genetic manipulation can now be achieved using a variety of tools, the most advanced of which is currently the CRISPR/Cas9 system. Prices for the relevant equipment have dropped steadily. To read more about genetic engineering using this system, see this link. For kits, see this link.
The Editor / Everything Progressive
Synthetic biology and genetic engineering are opening doors to new worlds.
