Category: DIY Equipment

Published: June 20th, 2020   Last Modified: June 23rd, 2020

We all know the sheer joy of doing just a handful of minipreps at a time. You pull out all the flicks of the wrist and bits of finesse you’ve built over the years. Once you move past…oh…8 minipreps, and it becomes work. After 16 or 24 minipreps and you’re into re-evaluating your life choices. Those wash steps add up! What about midi-preps? Maxi-preps? Protein columns? Yeah, being able to process those in parallel in a efficient manner sure would be nice. In comes….THE VACUUM MANIFOLD!!!!

What does the beastie do? You apply a vacuum at the barbed connector, open the valve, and the vacuum is distributed between the little inlets, allowing you to suck away 16 columns worth of wash buffer at once! It’s not the cheapest build at 55$ worth of parts and access to a 3D printer, but considering alternatives start at 150$ and go into the hundreds, it’s worthwhile (and fun!) to build your own. Let’s go!

Continue reading “Making (and using) a vacuum manifold!”

Published: April 15th, 2019   Last Modified: April 21st, 2019

Hands itching, got some free time, want to make some something useful? Here’s a three part video on how to make re-usable bacterial spread sticks, inoculating loops and tissue hole cutters! As well, I give you a easy, cheap system to sterilize and re-use them!

Published: March 29th, 2019   Last Modified: April 21st, 2019

Make a lot of media? Don’t want to drag out your 2 kilo jars of tryptone, yeast extract and salt every time? Make some pre-mix quickly, cheaply and easily!

Also, learn the dark art of microwaving agar plates. Just a trick to keep in the back of your pocket for when things don’t go according to plan.

Continue reading “(PJe9) Make your own media premix // How to microwave agar plates”

Published: November 2nd, 2018   Last Modified: November 14th, 2018

Some time ago I was pretty obsessed with building a pipetting robot, and to a degree it was a success. However, building it burnt me out pretty good. I will revisit the project and likely rebuild the whole thing to make it simpler and closer to the original plan. I tore down my opentrons clone, and this is all that remains:

Ahh, memories. But let’s not get all nostalgic and wax poetic. One aspect of the original opentrons robot (which has now been corrected, see their OT2) was that the pipetting section used a hand operated pipette strapped to some stepper motors. I was looking for inspiration from the pros to make my own pipetting module, so I got my grubby little paws on a Biomek P1000 module to tear down. Take a look, it’s a rare treat to see how a part of a 100,000$+ machine is made!

Continue reading “A quick teardown of the Beckman Biomek P1000 Pipette Module”

Published: July 11th, 2018   Last Modified: October 4th, 2018

Just thought some of you would enjoy some real-time fluorescent plant action, and a bit of an updated on the gene gun mk.III, it’s coming!!!

Published: July 7th, 2018   Last Modified: October 16th, 2018

Ever since my original post regarding making a DIY bandpass filter, I’ve been pretty obsessed with macro-view imaging of fluorescent proteins (FPs) in plants. The quality of pictures have come a long way, take a look, it’s a leaf infected with a potyvirus that carries eGFP within its genome:

Now, maybe it’s just me, but that looks beautiful. How did I get here?   Unfortunately I had to give up on using stage film, it’s cheap, you can use funny filters named “Pale Bastard Amber”, but when you’re looking at fluorescent proteins on this macro scale they don’t cut it. For a bit more money, you can get publication quality pictures with a few filters, some 3D printed parts and a cellphone camera. Let’s get into the nitty gritty logistics when it comes to looking at FPs in plants.

Continue reading “Glowing Plants 2: Fluorescent Boogaloo”

Published: April 1st, 2018   Last Modified: April 2nd, 2018

Getting tired of measuring out your buffers with a graduated cylinder like an animal? Boy, do I have a project for you! Here’s a low cost buffer dispenser that you can whip up in a few days and will run you less than 100$.

Continue reading “(PJ e7) The Dispensation Station, low cost buffer dispensing solution”

Published: January 11th, 2018   Last Modified: July 24th, 2018

Recently I had need to take macro scale pictures of plant leaves that had been infected with a virus that carries the eGFP coding sequence. Fluorescence microscopes would be the way to go, but you can only raise the lenses so far, and you’d need to remove any magnification to get a macro view. Generally, screwing around with a scope like that will make your local microscope tech pretty irate. What about a GFP illuminator that you can fit a whole plant into? These exist, but like any piece of super niche lab gear, it ain’t cheap.

How about a DIY option? Well, I’m definitely not the first to explore this area. Ian Chin-Sang and Weiwei Zhong, a couple of fellow canuks, did a write up about using LEDs and stage lighting filters to look at fluorescent proteins. Beauty, and for less than 100$ bucks! Sounds great right??? Well, once again, working with plants threw in some nice challenges!

This post will explore the implementation of their idea with a eGFP/plant/macro view use case.

(Update: Higher quality version)

Continue reading “Quick and dirty bandpass filter for GFP viewing in plants”