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Brass Bugs!

Sean Michael Ragan — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 13:57:09 +0000

Sculptor Tom Hardwidge calls his creations “arthrobots.” Many of them incorporate deactivated ammunition. [via Boing Boing]

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Cheap DIY GFP (Green Fluorescent Protein) Illuminator

Eri Gentry — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 22:30:02 +0000

It wasn’t some creepy-crawly fetish that got me reading The Worm Breeder’s Gazette. Rather, it was talking to Kathryn Hedges — a smart, passionate, and well-credentialed scientist and artist — about The Gazette’s tips on making a GFP illuminator on the cheap. GFP, or green fluorescent protein, is a fluorescent marker frequently used in molecular biology and neuroscience.

During her master’s program at http://www.humboldt.edu/humboldt/programs/descriptions/833/">Humbolt State University, Kathryn, like many other scientific researchers, was challenged with budget cuts and the difficulty of finding grant support. In order to continue her work on nematode neurons in a cash-strapped department when she had an 11th-hour need for new equipment, Kathryn unleashed the power of her “let’s see how can we do this better and cheaper” mentality to hack the DIY GFP illuminator into a better, research-worthy system, capable of visualizing neurons in tiny worms only 1 millimeter long.

Why was this important to Kathryn? In her words, “one of my strains kept selecting against GFP if I didn’t hand-select the brightest worms each generation. Without a way to see GFP on the “dissecting” microscope where I was picking up individual worms with a tiny wire spatula, I couldn’t guarantee that all their progeny would be fluorescent, which is a problem when I’m trying to see if a treatment damages them to make them lose fluorescence.”

The result: “The only microscopes we had with GFP capability were unsuitable for magnifying worms while moving them, and buying a suitable ‘scope would have cost thousands of dollars. I had $750 left in my budget, so I spent about $80 on LED parts and built an illuminator. It wasn’t bright enough to see long thin cells, so I spent $825 on top-quality filters, salvaged an old microscope eyepiece as a focusing lens, and used plumbing fittings to mount it on a micromanipulator we had in the lab. Then I could select my shiniest worms, raise reliably shiny worm larvae, and finish my experiments. If I had been tracking a larger feature in GFP, or I’d been using Red Fluorescent Protein, I probably could’ve used cheap filters and done the whole thing under $100. If I were to continue my experiments, I could use this illuminator when crossing GFP strains to see which progeny have both GFP markers.”

Kathryn’s thesis advisor encouraged this type of experimentation, as he and his own thesis advisor had developed their own DIY equipment to detect nerve conduction velocity in a small freshwater annelid. The prototype still hangs on a bulletin board over his desk. Not only does he teach animal physiology students how to do neurophysiology noninvasively, he and his research students have published papers using this method to collect data. He is a fan of the Backyard Brains Spiker Box and hopes to see it in action.

By hacking her own tool, without undergoing the too-high expense of buying an average illuminator for thousands of dollars (even used), Kathryn was able to finish her thesis. The illuminator is useful for any DIY scientists who need to view the expression of GFP or RFP (Red Fluorescent Protein) genes in bacteria or c. elegans. And Kathryn is proof you can do it on a dime.

Details on the basic GFP Illuminator from The Worm Breeder’s Gazette are below (after the jump). To learn more about Kathryn’s improvements, and to see her notes on worms, check out her post on Splendid Colors.

[Credit to Ian Chin-Sang and Weiwei Zhong]

Using LEDs as a low-cost source to detect GFP and DsRED

Ian Chin-Sang1 and Weiwei Zhong
Department of Biology, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada, 2Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Rice University, Houston TX
Correspondence to: Weiwei Zhong (weiwei.zhong@rice.edu)

Fluorescence detection components are too costly to be installed in every stereoscope. Often, our fluorescent markers are very bright and do not require the full capacity of such equipment. Here we present an LED setup that costs only about $100 and can detect bright fluorescent markers such as myo-2::GFP. The setup (Fig. 1) consists of:

X-acto helping hands or anything that can position the LED (Amazon.com)
Lamp cord that has a switch (local hardware store)
17-watt Xitanium LED driver (LED Supply)
Xitanium driver connector (LED Supply)
Heatsink (LED Supply)
Spot lens (LED Supply)
Luxeon V Star optic holder (LED Supply)
Royal-Blue Luxeon V Star LED for GFP detection (LED Supply), or Green Luxeon V Star LED for dsRED detection (LED Supply)
Optional excitation filter: Roscolux #4290 CalColor 90 Blue for GFP, or #389 Chroma Green for dsRED (Rosco.com | Edmund Optics)
Emission filter: Roscolux #12 Straw for GFP, or #19 Fire for dsRED (availability same as excitation filters)

Details on how to actually put this device together can be found here and here.

Fig 1. The LED setup

Fig 2. Using the LED setup to detect myo-2::GFP in an mIn1 animal.

Fig 3. Using the LED setup to detect myo-2::dsRED.

When assembling the LED to the driver, make sure that the +/- ends on the LED and the neutral/line ends on the lamp cord match those on the driver. Use a non-conductive glue such as silicone adhesive (Devcon, part No.12045, local hardware store) to put the lens holder onto the LED. The excitation filter can be glued to the lens by applying a small amount of glue on the edge. The emission filter can be simply taped under the microscope objective.

This setup has a long operating life, requires no warm-up or cool-down time, and has no radiation. However, it can only detect strong signals. We have used the setup to detect the following markers: myo-2::GFP (Fig. 2), sur-5::GFP, ajm-1::GFP, and myo-2::dsRED (Fig. 3).

Using LEDs as a low-cost source to detect GFP and DsRED

Bio: Eri Gentry is a biotech entrepreneur, citizen science community organizer, and the co-founder of BioCurious, the first hackerspace for biotech, in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Dropless Laser Projection Microscope Takes Glass Slides

Sean Michael Ragan — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 16:44:24 +0000

Interesting post from dusjagr over on Hacketeria, who reports success using a 100 mW green laser with the lens from a cheap webcam, in the arrangement pictured here, to make a projecting microscope that will accept conventional microscope slides, and is only slightly more complicated than a Planinsic-type water-drop projector. [via Hack a Day]

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Sharing Hi-Res 3D Fossil Models Online

Sean Michael Ragan — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 13:45:38 +0000

Interesting item from Dallas’s Southern Methodist University, where paleontologists Thomas L. Adams, Christopher Strganac, Michael J. Polcyn, and Louis L. Jacobs have used laser scanning to make a high-resolution model of a landmark outdoor dinosaur track in Glen Rose, Texas. Exposed to the elements in the town square, the track is (very slowly) eroding, and the team’s freely downloadable 3D model is intended to both preserve it for posterity and to facilitate its study by fossil buffs all over the world. Their results are published online in Palaeontologica Electronica. [Thanks, Alan Dove!]

Two Cells Enter! One Cell Leaves! Blood Wars!

Phillip Torrone — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 02:00:07 +0000

White blood cells pitted against each other in ‘Blood Wars’ @ Wired UK…

Blood Wars is an art-science installation that will pit white blood cells from two different people against each other in a “tournament” that aims to see which person has the strongest immune system.

The piece — by artist Kathy High — forms part of a new experimental exhibition between research laboratory SymbioticA and Dublin’s Science Gallery, called Visceral. Visceral explores the boundaries between art and living systems, bringing together more than a decade of work developed through SymbioticA’s art-science residency programme at The University of Western Australia. The aim is to show the tension between art and science and the cultural, economic and ethical implications of biosciences today.

No-Nonsense Beginner Hydroponics Tutorials

Sean Michael Ragan — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 14:00:26 +0000

Our pal Jared Bouck, whose light sculpture project appeared in MAKE Volume 24, has just posted a trifecta of simple, low-cost hydroponics tutorials for beginners like me. There’s a general-purpose single-plant bucket drip system with a sight tube, a CFL grow light cluster, and a simple deep-water culture system. [Thanks, Jared!]

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Matchstick entomology

Sean Michael Ragan — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 17:00:00 +0000

UK designer Kyle Bean, who previously made waves with his laptop/book sculpture The Future of Books, makes all kinds of awesome stuff. These delicate matchstick insects are just the latest page in his impressive online portfolio. [via Dude Craft]

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Ultra-minimalist laser microscope

Sean Michael Ragan — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 16:30:00 +0000

The laser microscope builds keep rolling in. This one from reader Steve Davee may not look like much, but it gets the job done with stuff you've probably got in your desk right now. The binder clip serves triple-duty by propping the laser pointer up at an angle, holding the button down, and supporting the bent paper clip that holds the sample drop out front in a loop. There are more pictures in Steve's Flickr set. [Thanks, Steve!]

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Rob’s laser microscope build

Sean Michael Ragan — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 14:00:00 +0000

Rob Cruickshank built this sweet laser microscope based (at least partly, I presume) on my recent project. There are more pics in Rob's Flickr set, including one of the custom screw-fitting he made to hold down the momentary switch on his laser pointer. Rob also reports that water squeezed from an aquarium filter is an excellent source of microfauna-rich samples. [Thanks, Rob!]

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Flickr data-mining discovers record-breaking whale migration

Sean Michael Ragan — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 17:00:00 +0000

Data is everywhere. Dedicated citizen scientists can advance "professional science," even without any appreciable funding, by learning to intelligently navigate and draw conclusions from the oceans of largely un-analyzed public data that we swim through every day. This story from The Boston Globe is a fantastic case in point:

By scouring a photo-sharing website for tourists' pictures of whales, a citizen scientist from Maine has helped to document a female humpback's record-breaking 6,000-mile journey from Brazil to Madagascar. The remarkable voyage of whale number 1363 from one breeding ground to another is a scientific discovery for the social-networking age -- a study made possible both by vacation photos posted on Flickr and an exhaustive library of photos of whales' tails that scientists have built since the 1970s.

The tail of "Whale 1363" was first cataloged by scientists off the coast of Brazil in 1999. Then, two years later, Norwegian Freddy Johansen snapped a film picture of her off the coast of Madagascar. In 2009, Freddy scanned in a bunch of old negatives from this trip and uploaded them to his Flickr account, and this shot was found by Gale McCullough of Hancock, Maine, who regularly monitors tourists' whale photos trying to match tails. An online pre-print of her discovery was published today in Biology Letters. [Thanks, Alan Dove!]

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