Author of the blog post here - to be a good sport, I gave the open insulin guys the design they&#x27;re using.  I think the chemistry is solid and it will work, but I can&#x27;t say I&#x27;m confident the team will be able to get it together.  Insulin is hard.<p>I could probably whip it up myself, but I&#x27;m already stretched thin doing two biology projects that aren&#x27;t paying me anything - and in fact are costing me (my nonprofit and a startup) and I make barely enough on some part-time contract coding work that I am really lucky to have landed through roommate-nepotism.<p>As to why I&#x27;m not really that excited about helping the Open Insulin Project any further:  I&#x27;ve become kind of wary about prevailing attitudes in the tech-to-bio transition field that basically takes an exploitative attitude following the Postdocapalypse...  There&#x27;s this investor class expectation that they can hire frustrated grad students and postdocs for cheap.  I think this is true, but they better watch out, in 99% of cases they are going to <i>get what they are paying for</i>.<p>I&#x27;ve decided to quit impostor syndrome and accept that I am kind of a biochemistry badass (I redesigned an enzyme and made it 4x better on my first shot based on first principles), and that if anyone wants my expertise they have to pay $$ for it.  The other week an ALS advocate showed me a drug candidate structure and I correctly identified the mechanism of action without knowing much about the target.  I&#x27;ve never been terribly excited about bringing the marginal cost of scientific labor closer to zero, and the OIP is basically that.<p>But good luck to them.