Update: Biotinkering, laws and regulations
Benjamin commented on the post "DIYBio and biotinkering - Laws and regulations in Germany" : The legal issues are pretty simple actually - you just cannot do any genetic engineering (including bacterial transformation) in your garage. Simple as that. Sorry. Since writing the original post, I've learned that this is not completely true. You can do some genetic engineering even without a BSL 1 license - namely, "self-cloning". The legal text is a bit mushy on the subject, but essentially, you can genetically engineer known-to-be-safe organisms if you use only sequences that are naturally found in this organism, or one that is "phylogenetically close", provided you don't release the result into the environment. I've talked it over with the office that is responsible for granting BSL licenses, and they suggested it may be OK for a biotinkerer to, for example, modify E. coli K12 with elements found in E. coli. The University Reading off...