From Fab Lab to Bio Lab

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.

Dedicated space

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:

Best practices

Equipment

Things to buy

Micropipettes and pipeting tips

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)

Eppendorf tubes

Tweezers

Gloves

Things to fabricate

Orbital shaking bed

Incubator

Please refer to my open hardware assignment for that.

Stirrer

Vortex Mixer

Centrifuge

Turbidimeter

96 well plates

Essay tubes holder