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 […]
Tag: DIY
Pretty Good Focus
There is nothing worse than arriving in the morning to find that your overnight data acquisition drifted out of focus two hours in. However, commercial focus stabilization set ups only come on expensive and relatively recent microscopes. The coy-ly named Pretty Good Focus (pgFocus), is an open source hardware/software device for focus stabilization designed by Karl […]
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 […]
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 […]
Build-your-own Lego Spectrometer
Check out this open source design for a spectrometer built out of Legos. You can use their designs to 3D print your own Legos and follow the online assembly instructions (or forge your own path!). Or you can buy a kit starting at $30 and running up to $85 for a kit with a Raspberry Pi and […]