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Biology's McGyver: DIY DNA P.C.R.
joesao writes "In this short, charming interview, Dr. Eva Harris talks about popularizing biology by doing what she calls "knowledge-based" technology transfer: "...people purify DNA for P.C.R. processing with a fancy substance made of silica particles, which costs about $100 for a few milliliters. [...] So what we've done is buy a 20-pound bag of ceramic dust for $5 at the hobby store. And you wash the stuff in nitric acid and sterilize it, and then you have thousands of tubes of that substance. We're not violating anything because the commercial manufacturers have their way of doing this, and we have ours." Open-source biology, anyone?"
Is a DYI thermocycler. Programmable. With a heated top.
Additionally, you can snag the silica gel needed for PCR purification from Vacutainers used to collect and subsequently separate blood.
-- I'd say your post was about 3 monkeys, 18 minutes.
Looks like I.T. markups are tame by comparison...
Perfectly Normal Industries
It really warms my heart to see liberals focus their concern for the poor in a specific and effective way. I feel the same when a conservative does so as well. No one is so callous as to completely not give a rat's ass about their neighbor, but it is more than difficult to find ways to help them than to feign contempt.
When effective people like Dr. Eva here go out and turn their ideas into reality it benefits everyone. If she were to go into politics the world would have been less one innovative scientist. Worse, the world would have been up one know-it-all politician.
There are several politicians out there today who could no doubt have been effective in changing society for the better had they pursued a specific profession other than politics.
But since (amazingly) the process is patented you can't make a buck off it unless you pay some licensing fees. But yes, those that have paid those licensing fees have made RIDICULOUS profits from 16 well cyclers.
It's MacGyver, not McGyver.. how ignorant can you be! :P
For instance, people purify DNA for P.C.R. processing with a fancy substance made of silica particles, which costs about $100 for a few milliliters.
I incubate a piece of tissue with a couple of cents worth of buffer and proteinase, and then dilute the resulting glop in water. Obviously different protocols call for different methods, but routine clinical preps shouldn't call for anything nearly as elaborate as what she describes. Anyone know what this silica thing she's talking about is? Qiagen spin preps?
This is called manual cycling. Suddenly, you don't need that $10,000 machine. Now, I didn't discover manual cycling or P.C.R., but I've helped popularize it.
Uh, no kidding you didn't invent manual cycling. That's how everybody did PCR until the cyclers became available.
Like I said, I can easily see where it's a very valuable activity to generate manuals and reagent sources for cheap techniques, but the interview makes her sound vastly more inventive than she is.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Why not set up a business where the lab work gets done in a place where IP isn't enforced and use the cheaper methods and such that you can't in the US to do the lab work. Then you send the data back stateside over the 'net. Viola, you've got a cheaper lab! Does someone run a business like this? Why not? Can you use these primative techniques to get results as good as the fancier techniques?
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Silica stuff works great when you do not want to think, or you do not have time for error. Just buy a kit from Qiagen. They use essentially the same columns for dna exctraction from blood, tissue, cells etc. For a relatively low sensitivity simple methods often work great. e.g. for PCR detection of Hepatitis B virus, one can incubate serum with 50 mM NaOH for 30 min at 37C, neutralize and go. But if you need to get a single-copy gene or low titer virus - silica columns or absorption on paper is your best bet.