Team:USP UNIFESP-Brazil/Hardware
AlgAranha Team USP_UNIFESP-Brazil
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This year, alongside our main wet lab project, we developed a set of Open Hardware, low cost , equipment, which were used and enhanced in our daily lab tasks. Furthermore, we spread our ideas and designs through many different presentations and even an open hackathon!
Our kit, the “Open Lab Hardware Kit” was planned provide basic equipment for any independent molecular biology lab, which included:
- Our “Seletora” Centrifuge </li>
- Our Transilluminator “Tabajara” </li>
Image 1- Transilluminator Tabajara as an UV transilluminator system
Image 2- Transilluminator Tabajara as photodocumentation system, with a set of filters
Image 3- Cellphone picture of a GelRed stained gel DNA electrophoresis with our system
- A Electrophoresis System with Chamber and Power Pack</li>
Image 4 - Chamber, gel tray and combs of our electrophoresis system
Seletora Centrifuge Manual
Accordingly to our principles of openess, we provide here a manual, with a step by step image guide in horder to help you build your own centrifuge for your next iGEM project!
Click here to download the manual to build your own Seletora CentrifugeZip files
Even though we were not able to produce such a detailed material for all our systems, here we provided the files for the 3D printing and laser cutting needed to produce them at your home town (or any place with a FabLab, at least)!
Here you can download the Electrophoresis System files,
And here you can download the Transilluminator Tabajara files https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2016/9/96/T--USP_UNIFESP-Brazil--SeletoraCentrifugeFull.zipParágrafo 2
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More than only setting up a great hardware kit, we also interacted intensively with a broad audience. We engaged the USP community directly with a well structured Hackathon, got in touch directly with teachers and high school students at the FabLearn conference and spread the Open Lab Hardware word even for designers and artists at FAZ!
BioHackathon at USP
In the hope of reaching out to the community and effectively making an impact with our work, we organized a hands-on open workshop on making open hardware equipment for biotech. The event was organized in partnership with University of Sao Paulo (USP) Synthetic Biology Club, USP Free Hardware group, USP entrepreneurship nucleus and the agrotech company Lotan, founded by former iGEMers. This partnership made the event possible and the company even adopted some hardware made, the Seletora Centrifuge, the Transilluminator Tabajara and one Electrophoresis Chamber. The rest of the equipment produced in the event was either given to the participants at purchase cost or was directly used by our team to develop our project. More than reaching out to the entrepreneurship community and former iGEMers, we had also a participant from USP-EEL-Brazil 2016 iGEM team, which travelled 200km just for the event!
The microcentrifuge and the other equipment we’ve built costed a great deal less than a commercial one, but the most important part is the autonomy and freedom that having these Open Hardware pieces promotes. The experience on making these equipments will surely guarantee that this culture will continue, not only among our team members, but among all the students that have attended our workshop. These students with different knowledge backgrounds, from biology to humanities to engineering, also are helping to build a community, wih insights that are making the Open Hardwares more functional, practical and accessible!
Fablearn
The brazilian edition of the FabLearn Conference was held by the University of São Paulo (USP) and the Stanford University during the 9th and 10th of September, 2016, at the campus of USP. We presented Seletora Centrifuge and Electrophoresis System using digital fabrication techniques. The conference gave us the opportunity to share experiences in research and education based in the “learning by doing” principle. We talked, for example high school students who built a syringe pump using Arduino and were planning to build a centrifuge as well in a really insightful meeting. We perceived a great interest from teachers, professors, high school and undergrad students who also encouraged us to provide a repository with our designs and projects so they could reproduce the devices themselves. This acceptance reveals that the practical impact of our project goes beyond research, transforming education and learning.
FAZ
The FAZ ("make" verb in impetartive form, portuguese) festival was held at the Red Bull Station, in Sao Paulo downtown, and gathered a very diverse group of people interested in the maker culture. Our team presented the hardware built using digital fabrication techniques in a lecture and demonstration session. The event represented a singular opportunity to share our work and insights: from the motivations that led us to built our own lab equipments to the context of the iGEM competition and the social impact of our project. As we were used to talking to scholars and students, FAZ gave us the chance to reach out for designers, architects and artists, a public we had not dialogued before. The insights and questions raised there enriched our experience by pointing out the design and visual aspects of building biotechnology devices. It was great to see how different backgrounds lead to different ways of approaching an specific problem.
