In early March 2014, the UCC iGEM team took part in the Synthetic Biology Future conference in Cork City. We took part in the debate surrounding the SynBio community and what role certain groups within the community will play contributing to its future.

The conference brought together academic researchers, DIY biologists (aka biohackers), and entreprfrieneurs to discuss the future of the field and how each group will influence it.

Biohackers are self-starting scientists (often but not always amateurs) who work outside of academia, government and industry, instead choosing to work out of home-made labs in their communities, backyards, and bedrooms (e.g. Formalabs). Biohackers are driven by a belief that everyone should have access to biotechnology, not just those with PhDs. In a time where advances in the life sciences and genetic engineering are having such profound implications for society as a whole, they believe it is everyone's right to participate.

An often overlooked aspect of Synthetic Biology is the relationship between the biohacker and the institutional/academic researcher. There is some disagreement between biohackers and academics over how valuable the work of biohackers can be, both for science and industry, when they lack the institutional support that fuels cutting edge research.

However, everyone noticed something interesting happen as the conference progressed. The biohackers and academic researchers in attendance had strikingly opposed views at the beginning of the event regarding the seriousness of biohacking's value, but as the presentations went on and debate ensued, the academics became excited about the biohacker community's promise for the field.

Dr. Matthew Bennett, the keynote speaker of the event said afterwards, "My general impression of biohackers before the conference was that they had limited capabilities to make significant progress in synthetic biology." Both Dr. Bennett and many of his colleagues felt that due to the limited access to funds and equipment of most biohackers, that their ability to contribute was similarly limited.

But after listening to the achievements of hackers such as Thomas Landrain, founder of La Paillasse (the world's largest non-institutional biolab) and Cathal Garvey, a Cork-based biohacker, Dr. Bennett revised his opinion on the value of biohacking, going on to state; "The thing that really sticks out in my mind is the ingenuity of the biohacker community. They have found novel methods to engineer biology that are remarkable."

Benthic Labs was founded by the members of the 2014 UCC iGEM team in order to take advantage of the commercial potential of our iGEM project ideas. No one on the team had any prior experience in business. Nevertheless we successfully applied (by submitting a 3 minute lightening pitch explaining our ideas) to participate in the SynBio Axlr8r (renamed Indie Bio) program.

This was an intensive 3 month program that ran over the summer and provided not only seed funding and lab space, but also mentors to help develop our ideas into a viable company. We were given a crash course in branding, marketing, finances, record keeping, and project management, among others.

At the end of the program, all that hard work was put to the test at the SynBio Axlr8r demo day in the Science Gallery in Dublin.

Bill Liao, a partner at SOS Ventures, a company that invests in emerging technologies, created the Synbio Axlr8r - a start-up accelerator for budding synthetic biologists and biohackers with commercialisable ideas - to nurture the success of their projects.