Posts from the ‘Weekly News’ Category
DIY atomic force microscope via Instructables
It’s that time again! Light news week. Get in touch via Twitter or email if you’ve got news, opinions, or just a link to pictures of sad dogs who ate bees.
Meetup in Cincinnati
Time: Tuesday August 5th at 8 PM.
Location: Hive13, 2929 Spring Grove Ave
Topic: They don’t have a space yet, but they want to throw around ideas for projects, funding, space, etc. Join them or give some advice!
And keep an ear out for a possible meetup in Linz, Austria, also in August.
Nanomicrobiology
People had a lot of fun talking about this, including how to build a DIY atomic force microscope. That’s used for high-resolution images of microbial surfaces. If you’re interested, check out the Google Group discussion for a whole bunch of papers and people to chat up about the technology.
Bonus: in Pittsburgh? Get on T.V.!
A T.V. producer solicited the list looking for Pittsburgh biohackers, so give her a shout if you’re in the area and feeling chatty.
Photo via Wikimedia
Hi folks! Happy Wednesday. Hope you’re ready for some DIYBio news, because I’ve got two weeks worth – I was away at the ostrich races.
Make assay plates from bubble wrap
Sick of spending cash on assay plates just to throw them away after one use? A Harvard scientist has figured out a way to turn everyone’s favorite packing material into sterile wells using clear nail polish and a syringe. Since the insides of the bubbles are sterile, scientists inject the materials and paint over the hole with a little nail hardener as sealant.
From the New Scientist article:
The team successfully ran blood tests for anaemia and diabetes, cultured the common food-borne bacteria Escherichia coli and raised the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, which is widely used as a model organism in biology experiments.
Cheap and easy, it’s perfect for DIYBio. Just save me some to pop.
Space plants out of Genspace?
Genspace scientist Yuriy Fazylov is running a crowd-funding campaign on experiment.com, trying to raise money to make plants that could survive the radiation bombardment in space.
Using genes from fungi that create pigments to block radiation, Fazylov hopes to create plants that could colonize a spaceship – or, closer to home, a radiation-heavy place like Chernobyl.
Open-source automation bot launches
The OpenTrons team is building robots to make your science easier. It just launched a new one: BioBot 1.0, a liquid handling robot to save your pipetting hand some work and ensure accuracy. It hooks up to your hand pipette. Watch the video here:
From team member Will Canine:
We are hosting the BOM, control app, assembly instructions, and getting-started guide on Synbiota: Check out how you can make one yourself for under $2000USD!
Hardware: All the parts for a DIY BioBot are off the shelf (buy them from OpenBuilds or Inventables, etc) or 3D printed (print in ABS — stronger than PLA and autoclavable), so you can make it all yourself. You use your own hand micropipette for the liquid handling — with most pipette brands, every size, any number of channels will fit in the BioBot with minimal modification.
Electronics: BioBot uses the TinyG motor controller, an awesome piece of tech from Syntheos, to run the robot’s six stepper motors.
Software: We are using Cordova for this BETA version of the OpenTrons control app: HTML5 interface on top of an Android plug-in sends the TinyG motor controller JSON wrapped g-code over Bluetooth serial. The source code is right here.
Get in touch with the OpenTrons team for more information.
DIYBio meetup in Boston
Student Joshua Elkington is disappointed in you, Boston. He’s hosting a meetup at Harvard on August 16, from 2-4 p.m. to discuss “current trends, emerging tech, and future directions.” So if you’re in the neighborhood, give him a shout!
Chemical calligraphy
Molecular structures can be elegant, but it’s hard to make them beautiful with traditional methods of drawing. Pen and paper hacker Matthew DeBlock has come up with a more artistic alphabet to describe the building blocks of our world.
Take a look at the how-to here, and let me know if this stroke of genius works for you.
That’s all for this week! As usual, email or tweet me with your news and views.
Happy fourth of July from New York! I hope all you Americans had some good grilled meat or vegan equivalents, and you non-Americans didn’t get too jealous of our fireworks displays.
DNA synthesizer tear-down
Long-time list member Nathan McCorkle ripped appart a 1989 Applied Biosystems PCR machine, so you don’t have to. Here’s a link to the step-by-step unveiling of the innards. If you happen to have one of your own and you’re looking for some advice, you can always consult the user manual – or just email the list, seems like there’s plenty of people who love old bio- gadgetry.
Hello world: UK hackerspace sends out feelers RE DIYBio
Up-and-coming hackerspace the Dorset Constructororium, in south-east Dorset, has set up camp in a garage, and they’re looking to expand. Once they’ve got a bigger place, they’re hoping to get involved with DIYBio projects – if you’re in the neighborhood, you should say hello!
“Bio-tinkering” internship in Amsterdam
From Pieter van Boheemen:
At Waag Society’s Open Wetlab we are looking for an intern to research our Biotinkering activities. If you are a student, this is an unique opportunity to combine your studies and DIYBio!
Informed by the principles of participatory mediated informal knowledge communities (Jenkins et al. 2006, Schäfer 2011, Resnick & Rosenbaum 2013) one of our lab’s goals is to perpetuate literate DIY-Biologists by teaching the required skills and critical thought. Social scientists that studied our activities, such as the “Do-It-Together Bio” events and “Open Wetlab = Open” evenings, brought to light the need for facilitated Biotinkering as an intermediary stage between the former fully guided workshops and the latter completely open ended events.
The ideal candidate has an interest in the concepts of tinkering, learning-by-making, the field of bio art and bio design, Do-It-Yourself Biology and/or citizen science and wants to gain experience in micromobilisation, participatory culture, communication and user framing. Using Waag Society’s “Users as Designers” methodology you will conduct creative action research that will include hands-on workshops and informal mentorship of lab users.
More information can be found on http://waag.org/en/job/internship-biotinkering-open-wetlab
There is also a second open internship position in a project concerning open drug discovery and antibiotics. A full description can be found here: http://waag.org/en/job/open-antibiotics-internship-open-wetlab
Interns are paid 300 Euro a month. For more information, or to apply, email Pieter here.
Now or any time, email or tweet me with good news or bad; just please don’t forget me, like a vial of smallpox in the back of a fridge.
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