DIY Hardware for the Home Biology Lab

In my last post I claimed that you can do biology, even synthetic biology, at home. But the kicker is that it's an expensive hobby. Outfitting a commercial or academic lab is incredibly expensive, with costs split between hardware and reagents/consumables. In this post I'm going to address the issue of obtaining cheap hardware for the home lab.

PCR—making targeted copies of a stretch of DNA—is routine in academic labs, but only because we are spoiled with the handy-dandy thermal cycler. The machine cycles your PCR reactions through a program of temperatures and holding times necessary for the reaction to work, but the units cost thousands of dollars ($US). A group of DIY science enthusiasts have created an open source alternative called OpenPCR. For $599 you get all the components necessary to assemble your own OpenPCR machine (an upside for the true DIY-er). I'm not very electronics savvy, but on the biology side it offers space for 16 simultaneous reactions (more than I typically would need and probably more than enough for any at-home experiments). The heating block goes up to 100°C, and ramps up at 2°C per second, which is a bit slower than what you'd expect in a full price machine but still reasonable. The machine also has an adjustable heated lid, which means you don't have to deal with messy oil to combat sample evaporation/condensation. Plus, since the machine is open source you are free to trick it out with whatever improvements you can think of.

Another option is to look for used lab equipment. Labs that are closing shop are often willing to part with their equipment for much cheaper than you'd find elsewhere. You might also be able to find old equipment that labs are replacing. There are niche sites that cater to this market specifically, or you can just check out eBay. At the time of writing this article I searched eBay for "microfuge" and found several models going for under $100 from trusted sellers.

Obviously this isn't a cheap hobby, even if you buy secondhand equipment. The problem is that hobbyists don't usually take advantage of cost-saving equipment sharing like you'd find in any academic lab. But a group of New Yorkers has put together a community molecular biology laboratory called Genspace, featured on the Nature Video YouTube channel here. Similarly, the Boston Open Source Science Lab serves the Boston area and BioCurious the Sunnyvale, Calif. area. These organizations don't only provide economical equipment sharing. They are also a network of experts and fellow DIYers.

You are also free—and in the spirit of DIY, encouraged—to improvise. Pressure cookers double as autoclaves; cheap supermarket or hardware store chemicals replace expensive graded ones from chemical suppliers; and (as Ledford (2010) suggests) armpits double as 37°C incubators. There are a wide collection of these tips on the blogosphere, YouTube, etc. Science is rightfully a little messy, but never forget to keep safety as your top priority. Some things, such as fire extinguishers and safety glasses, shouldn't be improvised for safety's sake, of course. The most important safety measure is just to ensure you know what you're doing!

Disclaimer: I do not own the above products, so I cannot speak to their performance.

Image Credits: OpenPCR (used with permission); eBay logo: mafik66 (via Flickr)

References:

DIYbio.

Ledford, H. Garage Biotech: Life Hackers. Nature 467, 650–652 (2010).

OpenPCR.

Tachibani, C. We Are All Biologists. Life Sciences Insight 1, 42–45 (2011).