Electroporation is a powerful alternative to heat shock for delivering small molecules such as plasmids across cell membranes. By application of an electrical field netivetly charged DNA is forced into elector-competent cells by an electrohoresis-type effect. Electroporators can be expensive, generally over $2000, hence the popularity of more chemical solutions such as heat shock. Enter […]
Category: DIY
Making a Solid State Cooling Block with PipetteJockey
We’d like to feature the work of PipetteJockey, and in this post we do that under the guise of a pseudo-tutorial they have posted on how to hack together a Solid State Cooling Block. The tutorial isn’t exactly detailed in the step-by-step, it makes the assumption that you already have a heat-sink block, and it’s up […]
Smartphone Fluorescence Spectroscopy
Want to do portable florescence spectroscopy on the cheap? Hojeong Yu, Yafang Tan, and Brian T. Cunningham wrote a 2014 paper that demonstrates that a smartphone camera, attached to a set of optical components that provide wavelength dispersion and a green laser pointer, can function as a sensitive fluorescence spectrometer.
Making Vacuum Chambers
If you would like to make an essentially free vacuum chamber with pump, Chris Notap has a useful video on making one out of spare parts using a vacuum pump from a discarded dehumidifier or fridge. Component parts are in the description. If you want something a little more solid, check out this write up […]
Fluid exchange with LEGOs and ImageJ: NanoJ-Fluidics
We’ve been over-covering DIY syringe pumps for awhile now, but this LEGO based solutions is a lot more than just the delightful idea to use LEGOs for syringe pumps. NanoJ-Fluidics consists of three parts, a LEGO based, multiplexable syringe pump system, a liquid exchange system to cell culture dishes, and an electronic and software control […]