DIYBIO.to has educational, community and member projects.
Community Projects
We have a project with experiment.com in which we are reaching out to teach Hands-on methods of PCR. We will be posting the sites and times for our free or almost free courses in the coming weeks. The information about our course can be found here: Demystifying-PCR-fostering-scientific-literacy-through-hands-on-PCR-education
Another current community project is species typing in commercial meat. DNA is extracted from the meat sample and species-specific primers are used to amplify DNA in the sample via the polymerase-chain-reaction (PCR). Using PCR we can identify the species of DNA present in the meat. We have primers that detect beef, pork, lamb, horse and chicken DNA. We are also interested in looking at Fish species, as different fish have been reported to be mixed during processing, especially in fish products like fish sticks and fake crab.
We also perform agar art at the Hacklab.to open house nights, and demonstrate this fun project so that others can get a sense of the wide variety of colours available to biology techniques and also have some fun! Microscopy and other demos are also performed for these demo nights.
Member Projects
Members of DIYBIO.to are welcome to conduct their own experiments in our community lab space.
One member is making green beer for St. Patrick’s day, overexpressing GFP in yeast. However, we are aiming to use eGFP as it is more tolerant of low oxygen concentrations than GFP. We also are planning on performing Crispr in yeast to ensure continued expression of eGFP. There are number of technical challenges to get a very fluorescent green and tasty beer, which will require some screening for optimcal desirable characteristics and fluorescence.
Another group is interested in working with microfluidics to develop methods of detecting proteins. This involves creating the clones to be expressed in E.coli, and testing whether the commercial antibodies to these proteins work well for the testing, then developing the assay.
We also have bioinformatic projects in our Meetup group looking for methods of examining changes in networks over time on Cytoscape. We are also interested in learning more about cutting-edge genomics methods, such as spatial genomics methods of analysis. We currently have a member who is conducting experiments so cutting-edge he sometimes falls of the cliff of knowledge.