It’s been a while since the last blog post, for many different reasons, not the least of which the fact that I have moved to Boston (for at least a few months). Boston is a fantastic city, for those of you who haven’t been here, with one of the prime features the sheer number of Universities located within close proximity of one another. This fosters a fantastic aura of learning and interest in knowledge, as epitomised by the current Cambridge Science Festival.
So this last weekend, I grabbed my backpack and headed down first to the Science Carnival, just down from Harvard Square. Amongst the usual displays of liquid nitrogen icecream and coloured slime (both displays we use on open days and public events), there was an impressive array of examples of people building their own equipment (Makerfaire). I was particularly impressed by cheap 3D printing (around $750 US// £500), achievable through kits. There were also a number of electronics displays, the most interesting of which (to me), for creating cheap instrumentation, was LiquidWare – open source electronics.
From here, I took the free trolley bus down to the MIT Museum, which was having a free-entry open day. My favourite part of the permanent exhibition is upstairs, the robot display – hopping robots, running robots and social robots, all of which were ultracool, alongside an example of a LISP machine. There were also a number of impressive kinetic sculptures and some holograms from the 1960s-1980s, including the one from national geographic in 1984, which I am sure I still have somewhere back at my parent’s place (which, on just checking for an image online, I realise is worth quite a bit of money!). There were several cool interactive displays for the festival. These included Lego DNA/Proteins and the use of UV-active beads to demonstrate the impact of UV from sunlight, and the effects of using sunscreen.
However, the true highlight was to come on Sunday. Mac Cowell is co-founder of DIY-Bio, and was running a session entitled “read your own genome”. The premise is to use facilities to do biochemistry that are available to the average person, so that, if you were so inclined, you would be able to partake in proper scientific discovery at home. Whilst in principle this might raise some potential ethical issues, my view is that educating the public in science, and generating an enthusiasm, curiosity, and critical mind is worth far more than any potential problems that could possibly arise (we did have quite an animated discussion over pizza later with some Knight Journalism Fellows afterwards on exactly this topic).
The session was a lot of fun, and, as Mac pointed out, is something that you can run as a party trick for an added twist. You will need:
As Mac described to the group, you should firstly generate around 10-15ml of spit, to which you added contact lens cleaner (containing EDTA, amongst other things, which allows chelation of metals important for DNA (protein) binding), detergent for solubilisation, contact lens solution (the small bottle, containing proteases, which eat all the enzymes that destroy DNA) and lastly, alcohol, which is added slowly to the top (by pouring down the side of the spittle cup) to precipitate the DNA (this mixture can in principle be drunk, but tastes soapy). The precipitation results in a sticky gob,* which can then be transferred to some milli-Q ultra pure water for later processing. This processing involved addition of primers, in my case specific for the gene coding for ‘bitter taste’, to see which variation I have. The samples were sent to an out-sourced lab for sequencing and, hopefully, the results will be back soon!
So stay tuned to see if the DIY-bio sequencing experiment worked. Even if it didn’t it was a lot of fun and definitely something to try at home!
… If you are interested in reading more, the event was written up in the Boston Globe …
*[You can do similar extractions with all manner of fruit and vegetables. Most popular are kiwi fruits, onions and strawberries.]
