This page shows the process of conversion of The Beach Lab into a Bio Laboratory, well, sort of. But the truth is that it can help you as a starting point to decide what to buy or fabricate, how to set up the layout and some other things I am struggling.
Based in my experience in fab labs and after taking HTGAA I can tell you that you will need a clean room dedicated space for HTGAA and perform bio experiments. I mean, you cannot do all those things near the shopbot or let the visitors and kids tampering with micropipettes and some other sensitive equipment. I think the best is idea is to build a small bio-dedicated kitchen inside the lab. It might be open in a clean area. I would also put a sticker nearby with a scary biohazard sign, maybe a poster of the movie 28 weeks later. That should keep the snoops away. This bio-kitchen should have:
There is a lot of tiny liquid handling in synthetic biology. We are dealing with microliters here, down to 0.2 microliters. For reference a drop of water is about 50 microliters. And for that you need a special piece of equipment called micropipette. At this stage I would say this is way too complex to fabricate in a fab lab, so because they are not too expensive (around 40 EUR each) and you only need 4 to 5 I am just going to order them. The people from PRBB only uses Gilson Pipetman micropipettes, they don't want to use anything else.
| Common micropipette size | Volume |
|---|---|
| P2 | 0.2 - 2 uL |
| P20 | 2 - 20 uL |
| P100 | 20 - 100 uL |
| P1000 | 100 - 1000 uL |
| P200 | 50 - 200 uL (optional) |
Please refer to my open hardware assignment for that.