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oapplesauce oapplesauce
wrote...
11 years ago
Hi,
I love biotechnology especially Biohacking with home made biotech equipment. I get lab protocols from Openwetware.com and built my equipment with instructions from Hacketeria.com except the PCR Machine which i had shipped from openPCR. And for the buffers, staining solutions, enzymes etc..., I nick them from my school biotech lab.

The thing is most of the people here do not believe that this is possible with 12th grade knowledge and homemade biotech equipment.

So I want to do a project so cool to impress them so much to change thir above opinion....

Any Suggestions.........
Biohacking is basically experimenting with DNA and other aspects of genetic engineering with homemade biotech equipment by people with no professional experience in the field.

The equipment i currently have are :
Waterbath
Incubation Chamber
Sterilization hood
DIY Microscope
PCR Machine/ DNA thermocycler
Microcentrifuge
Micropippetors with Pippette tips
Microwave
Gell Electrophoresis chamber

That's it...that's everything i have and as for the restriction enzymes, Ligase, Polymerase, Salts, Buffers, Plasmids etc.... I can nick them from my school's biotech lab or order them from the internet, so no worries....
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Replies
wrote...
11 years ago
I can definitely help you. Although what do you mean by 'Biohacking'.

List the equipment you currently have and I'll think of something. For PCR you'll need enzymes, primers etc do you have this? (pretty expensive). Do you have a electrophoresis tank? Or you could make one....

EDIT: okay cool, it's good you have an interest in this stuff. Well looking at the equipment you've got, it's definitely going to be a genetics experiment. The part that I am struggling with is how you will actually get results that your mates will be able to A) comprehend B) actually 'see'. What I mean is that you could potentially do an elegant experiment and say you use GE (gel electrophoresis) to get your results then you need a way to visualise the DNA on the gel. This takes some nasty chemicals and a UV-transilluminator. Have you got any instant messaging programs like skype (much easier than chatting here). The main asset that you have (apart from your interest) is the PCR block, it is utilised in a wide range of genetic experiments and due to its exponential properties, is quite resilient to the experimenter messing up! You sound like you have the right material to do some transgenesis if you are up for it! I mean, you have all the equipment necessary to clone a gene and allow its expression (if you can get hold of some model organism; Saccharomyces cerevisiae, E.coli, Drosophilla?) Yeast and E.coli are the easiest and have many, many plasmids available. But the choice depends on what you want to do. If you want to produce a protein then yeast will have more post-translational modifications than bacteria etc... Let me know. And good work!

Also; if you need any protocols or papers from any journal then give me a shout, I have access to most.

EDIT2: here's something to do first; look at what restriction endonucleases you have. Then search for their recognition sequence. Next; do a BLAST search of those sequences in the human genome. This should give you an idea of where abouts in your genome those specific REs will cleave, and whether there is anything interesting between its cleavage sites (say your favourite gene for example)- this could possible be cloned into a plasmid depending on its length and many more things. You could even simply genotype yourself using PCR and GE.
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