&gt; Biopharma is not IT where a smart kid can compete from his garage. It just isn&#x27;t.<p>It isn&#x27;t today, but it may be at some point. We tend to underestimate the effects of monumental shifts like we&#x27;ve had in IT. This project represents the first steps in that direction.<p>&gt; The sort of thing that a single undergrad could do in a few days.<p>Even if this were true, the OpenInsulin project doesn&#x27;t have a large institution&#x27;s lab facility. Nor does the project have a government grant as benefactor. They are operating only off crowdfunding. It&#x27;s obviously not enough to get through the FDA approval process, but IS enough to construct a roadmap to that end and make headway on a functional insulin producing organism. The project already has <i>E. coli</i> making proinsulin. The experimental focus has now moved to methods of purification. They are also investigating the feasibility&#x2F;cost of getting this through the FDA approval process for biosimilar molecules.<p>I think the real magic of this project is its open nature, which I find to be lacking in the scientific community. This is research that anyone can make meaningful contributions to. Science (specifically biology) can learn a lot from open source software.