Team:Cambridge-JIC/Technology

Growth Chamber

Problem Statement

Whilst growth chambers for the cultivation of plants are widely available in a variety of configurations, from the simple cold frame to advanced climate control devices, they are generally unsuitable for growing small lower plants such as marchantia in a scientific setting. The reason for this is two-fold; as commercially produced growth chambers are usually designed to grow higher plants such as wheat, they are typically very large pieces of equipment. Furthermore, growth chambers with the ability to perform active climate control are costly and have a much greater feature set than is required for the controlled cultivation of marchantia.

In light of this, the problem statement for the Marchantia Growth Facility (MGF) was given as follows;

The task is to create a low cost device capable of cultivating marchantia by controlling the light conditions and air flow to the plants. In addition, the device must act to prevent the growth of foreign organisms on the marchantia plates, which could contaminate the specimens and hamper plant growth.

Hardware

As shown in figure , the MGF consists of a cuboidal chamber, which is divided into four subchambers. Each of the subchambers has an identical fan and lighting unit, all of which are controlled via an arduino microcontroller.

CAM Files

The hardware for the MGF was designed in VCarve Pro

Software

Description of the incubator software goes here

Assembly Instructions

Assembly instructions for the incubator

Pipette Counter

Problem Statement

Unlike "dry" engineering disciplines, experimental synthetic biology involves a great deal of wet work, which carries its own set of constraints. The most significant of these is that fluid mixing is generally irreversible, a consequence of which is that errors made when performing a protocol are generally ruinous to the outcome of the experiment. A frequent cause of such errors is pipetting a reagent into an array of containers, which requires unbroken concentration from the operator in order to ensure that each container receives the correct amount and type of reagent. Not only is this difficult to achieve with near-perfect reliability, it also places strict restraints on the operator for the duration of the pipetting operation.

Gel Former Jig

Problem Statement

In order to work correctly, electrophoresis gels must have two open parallel sides. This poses a problem for the fabrication of the gel, as being cast from a liquid solution, the mould used to cast the gel must have removable sides. A common solution for casting gels is to wrap the sides of the container in masking tape to form temporary walls, which can then be removed when the gel has set. The principal disadvantage of this method is that the seal formed by the tape is not water tight, which causes leaking of the gel.

CAD Files

CAD files for the gel former

Hardware

Description of the gel former jig

Manual Assembly Instructions

Assembly instructions for the gel former jig