Totally different, probiotics usually have assorted bacteria that are usually not associated with a healthy or unhealthy gut. Microbiomes, like those of the gut function as communities meaning you can't just add one or two species and hope everything is better(at least not from what we know at the moment). Using a fresh poop sample increases the chances that not only will a transplant take but also that the beneficial microbes will be there in the appropriate amounts to be beneficial.

Yeah, http://hyasynthbio.com/ are working on making CBDs in Canada.

Not that I support genetically engineering yeast to produce THC because that would be illegal. I hope once THC is decriminalized federally people will do that. Imagine growing a "joint" in 6 hours. The future.

Genetically Engineering marijuana seems to be an up and coming industry. Isn't Snoop Dogg engineering his own custom strains?

Hah AGREED!

I don't know about much more difficult. Normally, for bacteria, people use lambda red recombination strategies which are much much more difficult than CRISPR. The main benefit of CRISPR is it's easy of use. All that you need is to clone in a new gRNA and template.donor DNA in a plasmid and you are good to go. I agree that no genome engineering tool is going to destroy the world.

Seems reasonable. I have also contributed to lots of campaigns that have never actually turned out. DIY Science.Bio, BioHacking whatever you want to call it, is already going strong. CRISPR is not so much different than most of the techniques people have been doing so theoretically it shouldn't be that much more difficult to make it also work outside of lab.

PS. I am the NASA Scientist.Creator of the kits.

Though I don't know much about people being hanged in barns in 1272 or Chipotle, I could perhaps answer other questions about the kit

I have not thought of that. The Cool thing is you can test whatever you think might work. If has some Scientific basis and logic to it that is even cooler!

On the one hand I agree with you. Things can hit a critical point fast if human beings are not careful.
On the other hand(this one is my right hand I think) comfortability is what allows us humans to spend time thinking and developing technology and cool things and beautiful things! Where does one draw a line like you said. What if I am in extreme pain but it is not life threatening and the lab test for the bacteria takes two days? I guess we could make people suffer or we could give them antibiotics in hopes that the diagnosis was correct. Are you going to be the one that rejects giving the whiny mother the antibiotic only to have her child die? Maybe the chances are highly unlikely but who is the one who is going to be responsible for that?

In my view humans are super awesome. We can come up with new technology and invent ways to try and overcome difficult problems. As I said. Maybe you are correct and we are just creating super bacteria that are going to wipe us out. I guess I am just _hoping_ that we as humans overcome in the end. Maybe naively.

Thanks so much!
Yeah, the project has many cool aspects. To teach Science, to bring awareness to antibiotic resistance, to start a massive open Science project.

The development of drugs is no small task, we know that! We are attempting to contribute what we can and allow others to contribute what they can. Often people think of how things are _now_ but not how they will be in the future. Regardless of whether we, or people who collaborate with us, or companies, develop these drugs the database should be pretty awesome to have around. Who knows, maybe in 50 years the NIH donates a bunch of money to develop one of these drugs, probably not but no one can predict the future. And if it is not done there never is any chance of that happening. So you do the best you can with the present and hope someone picks it up eventually.