This week: Gel electrophoresis in a straw

Hi everyone — Thoughts and discussions took a backseat to projects and results. This week we had everything from starting DIY iGEM Teams to sharing results of straw electrophoresis. Check it out!

Projects:

• iGEM Team – Mac Cowell invited everyone to start a DIY iGEM team in 2009. (thread)
  
• Gel electrophoresis –  Tito Jankowski ran gel electrophoresis in a straw. The instructions are on OpenWetWare. (thread)
  
• DIY PCR – Bryan Bishop wants a cheap PCR machine. (thread)
  
• DIY Spectrophotometer – “Let’s not concentrate on making duplicates of old technology; let’s make something better.” – Tom Knight (thread)
  
• The Toothbrush Genome Project – Andrew Hessel invites us to know more about the bacteria in our mouths (thread)
  
• DIYbio Educational Outreach – Julie Norville starts the DIYoutreach group (thread)

Links and Discussion:

• Defining and shaping DIYbio culture (Security, Safety, and Responsibility) is discussed by Roger Brent and others (thread)
  
• Do-it-yourself PCR by Scientific American is brought to attention by Reshma Shetty (thread)
  
• Can ‘open peer review’ work for biologists? Jason Morrison and others discuss an article from Nature (thread)
  
• Flu biology: Lora wonders if we can sequence different strains of flu (thread)