In the most high stakes Lab on the Cheap project to date, a team of researchers is working on developing an open design for an emergency ventilator. These life-saving machines are in short supply at hospitals around the world. They can cost $30,000 each. Originally designed by students as part of a class, this design […]
Month: March 2020
Make a polarimeter for $350
A polarimeter is used to characterize a sample by measuring the rotation of polarized light when it interacts with the sample. They can cost upwards of ~$10,000, but a $350 DIY high-resolution polarimeter has recently been detailed in a paper by Andrew Harvie , Tom Phillips, and John deMello. The bill of materials for the […]
OpenPlant toolkit
A paper from Jim Haseloff’s lab on a low maintenance model plant for bioengineering. The paper describes the process for maintaining genetic lines in the plant Marchantia polymorpha without the need for greenhouse facilities. It presents the work they’ve done to make the DNA easily editable (such as screening for promoters) for bioengineering purposes and […]
Soda bottles as disposable culture vessels
This week Professor Christine Morrison at the Colorado School of Mines shared a picture on twitter in which she was using 2-liter plastic pop bottles to culture bacteria in a shaker instead of using glass 2L Erlenmeyer flasks which cost ~$100 each. For those who are skeptical, there are a lot of papers about growing […]