Economical View

The economical considerations regarding our project were carried out according to the motto:

Make the world a better place - Open access for scientific progress

In the center of every economic analysis are the customers and their needs and desires. Every commercial company is interested to satisfy and deal with all customer needs for better sales figures, and in order to maintain regular clientele. Both measures aim for higher financial profits. On the global seller’s market of technical laboratory equipment there is a permanent competition between the existing providers. This competition depends on the technical improvement followed by price wars. Always high price/performance ratios are catching customer and influence the buying decision.

Take a look at cost calculations for technical equipment including development, production, transport, warehousing and sale. Usually, you will find low material costs but really high personnel, transport and warehousing costs. At least financial corporate profit is a big cost point. In general, these factors are making technical equipment for labs really expensive.

We follow a strategy to circumvent unnecessary costs for customers by realizing a social vision. In accordance with the principle of open hardware including open source, information where to get the necessary components, quantities, a step-by-step technical construction manual and circuit diagrams could be published online for free. So our profit is not of financial nature but is instead based on recognition and on motivating other iGEM teams and companies to spread the idea of open hardware, too. At least we want to mention that our vision is limited in getting acceptance by companies on the global seller market . These companies, parts of them global players, are profit orientated. Our vision is standing against this as non-profit-idea finding acceptance in other groups of customers.

WatsOn

The measurement device WatsOn for our 2D biosensor, too, has been designed accordingly. So far, no comparable devices could be found on the commercial market. Here, we definitely have a pioneer role. Everybody can follow the given building instructions and create his own WatsOn for 310 $. The exact cost-calculation can be found here. Such those low prices with the acceptance of self-building opens a grand new customer market and offer competition to commercial saleable products. However, please always remind yourself of the respective safety aspects when dealing with GMOs and human pathogens.

Figure 1 WatsOn self-made concept make him available for low budged organisations

OD/F Device

Everyone interested in biological work should be able to use basic equipment such as photometers. In general we have to make a difference between our OD and our F device. The reason for this is the bad comparability to commercial devices. These don't combine the measure of fluorescent and optical density. With our OD/F we offer a solution to combine both detecting methods in one device. With our given instructions also two separate devices one for OD and one for F could be build. In this context we offer a flexibility of choice. Commercially obtainable spectrophotometers like [http://www.opticsplanet.com/unico-model-s-1205-spectrophotometer-5-nm-bandpass.html UNICO S-1205], for example, costs 1.249 $ or more, and can measure optical density only. At the same time they are heavy, not portable and therefore not easy to handle. Comparable to our developed device in the points measuring range and portability is the OD-meter [http://www.laboratory-equipment.com/laboratory-equipment/cell-density-meter.php CO 8000]. This device measures also the optical density at 600 nm but still costs almost 920 $. Our OD/F Device can measure optical density as well as fluorescence for less than 60 $. Cost saving lies here round about 850 $. All you need is to invest some time to construct our OD/F Device and this could also be a positive learning effect for schools and universities. Therefore, we present a solution for low budget institutions like schools, universities, community labs and the biohacking scene. Besides commercial [http://www.moleculardevices.com/systems/microplate-readers/fluorescent-readers/gemini-xps plate reader] are also availible on the market, too. To compare our device with this comercial devices is really difficult. No portable devices like ours could be found which can also measure at a wave-band of 480 nm. In our cooperation with the Kaiser-Karls-Gymnasium we get first experience using our OD/F device in our target groups like schools. As result we received the answer of our question if the device is useable in daily practice got a positive feedback.

Possible application of our OD/F device