I am curious what you are actually trying to do… You list is far too general for one thing. Is there a particular project that you are building up to…?

Recently found this web presentation, linked from UCB iGEM 2008 team wiki.

“What Foundational Knowledge is Required for Scientific Inquiry in Synthetic Biology?”
— http://www.vuvox.com/collage/detail/0a23ffbf4

The conclusion was that basically anyone who finishes the typical Bio1A class is ready to go.

The following link at the Anderson Lab tutorials gives the “bare bones” background tutorials — http://andersonlab.qb3.berkeley.edu/Tutorials/iGEMTutorial.html

The rapidly reducing cost of experimentation is the exciting part. Iterating over many experiments is fine, it’s how man built airplanes and learned to fly– as long as the cost of each experiment isn’t prohibitive, trial & error prototyping allows rapid progress to be made through trial & error. In computer science, the current trendy term for this is “extreme programming (XP)” or “agile development”. In computer science, this works great, because the cost of each experiment ($$$) is basically zero.

I don’t have any formal biology training — no laboratory courses — and everything I know how to do at the bench I picked up by watching somebody else or by reading a recipe.

What it *really* takes is just a willingness to try anything, and to put up with failure.

– Rob