3D printing, custom microtiter plates, and sequencing 10,000 metagenomes

[Patrik]

Russell Neches, a grad student in Jonathan Eisen's lab at UC Davis,
has a great blog post up on his approach to sequencing 10,000
metagenomes at a time, using custom 3D printed 384-well microtiter
plates to normalize DNA dilutions. Check it out!

http://vort.org/2011/09/19/how-sequence-10000-metagenomes-3d-printer/

He's gotten to the point of actually printing some test molds on one
of the Makerbots at NoiseBridge in SF.

I think it would be really cool to invite him over to BioCurious some
time to talk about his project, and show off some of the hardware and
software he's been building!

[Patrik]

Follow-up comment from Russell, on his blog post:

"Patrik --

A decent, reasonably-priced benchtop liquid handling robot would be
fantastic. I will be teaching a research seminar this Winter Quarter
on laboratory robotics. Some undergraduates from the UC Davis Robotics
Club are going to build a couple of RepRaps using our printer, and
then will modify one of them to dispense water. Maybe other liquids,
too, depending on what design they come up with.

When I have something working, I'd love to come by and demo it!"

[Lin, Dawei]

Ha, Russell is my upstairs neighbor at the UC Davis Genome Center. He taught my wife how to use 454 Junior. It is funny to know his 3D printing work from this list instead from him personally. I could carpool with him. I am looking forward to seeing the new lab.

Dawei

________________________________________
From: biocu...@googlegroups.com [biocu...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Patrik [pat...@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2011 9:59 PM
To: BioCurious
Cc: diy...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [biocurious] Re: 3D printing, custom microtiter plates, and sequencing 10,000 metagenomes

[Heather]

I just dropped off a peristaltic pump on Monday. Maybe it can be of
use!

-Heather

On Sep 21, 10:54 pm, "Lin, Dawei" <lhs...@ucdavis.edu> wrote:
> Ha, Russell is my upstairs neighbor at the UC Davis Genome Center. He taught my wife how to use 454 Junior. It is funny to know his 3D printing work from this list instead from him personally.  I could carpool with him. I am looking forward to seeing the new lab.
>
> Dawei
>
> ________________________________________

> From: biocu...@googlegroups.com [biocu...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Patrik [patr...@gmail.com]

[kathryn hedges]

Even if we don't use it for dispensing, I used one to power a rotator. We used a 6cm Petrified dish as an adapter for a bucket lid rotor, and taped on the Eppendorf tubes. The gearing is set up well for slow rotation. (~2 second period or 1/2 Hz.)

Kathryn

[Sandeep]

Heather,

What is the minimum flow rate on the pump? If it is slow enough, we
could make chemostats to run microbial evolution experiments. Just
feed test tubes a constant rate of media, and collect it on the other
end with a vacuum pump and watch them evolve. Using fluorescence, you
can track even multiple strains growing in the same pot. With a
sufficiently sterile setup, it can go for months (while changing
media).

Sandeep

On Sep 22, 4:08 pm, kathryn hedges <biolart...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Even if we don't use it for dispensing, I used one to power a rotator. We
> used a 6cm Petrified dish as an adapter for a bucket lid rotor, and taped on
> the Eppendorf tubes. The gearing is set up well for slow rotation. (~2
> second period or 1/2 Hz.)
>
> Kathryn

> On Sep 22, 2011 1:51 PM, "Heather" <vivalak...@gmail.com> wrote:> I just dropped off a peristaltic pump on Monday. Maybe it can be of

[Heather]

Hi Sandeep,

You'll have to check it out! I never used it personally and now it's
at BioCurious. Your proposal definitely sounds feasible!

Heather