Re: [DIYbio] Re: Remote design and execution of diy bio experiments

I'll say this:

If MIT Engineering departments spent any time on biorobotics design
competitions rather than sponsoring publicity-happy robot soccer
tournaments, the field of synbio would be much farther along.


On 6/3/20, John Griessen <john@industromatic.com> wrote:

>
> I've seen some
> positive-displacement-syringes that use no air, just a metal wire
> plunger in a close fitting glass tube. Is that something that needs more
> testing for automated liquid handling success? Or is
> there a need for a better automatable seal between pipettor tip and pipettor
> -- maybe with an O-ring?

The Tecan platforms use water displacement, not air, if I get your
meaning. Humidity differences cause changes in evaporation. There is
no problem of the seal of the tip cartridge, there is no leakage, the
plastic tips are form fitting. The chasm from my perspective is that
a human biologist will make numerous visual error-checks while
pipetting, to ensure a droplet is precise, this involves many things,
such as holding a tip at an angle to the target, tapping with a
fingernail, visually checking again, dispensing less or more based on
droplet size, etc. A robot arm can't do these things. Also note that
viscosity of the various liquids is variable. Using magbeads modified
this problem because they are in suspension. Many of these types of
problems are the reason research has been put into alternate carrier
methods not requiring traditional liquid pipetting, such as
oil-in-water microfluidic experiments but those weren't very viable
either (haven't checked progress lately).

A random whitepaper which might or might not be interesting reading.
https://www.pacb.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Guide-Pacific-Biosciences-Template-Preparation-and-Sequencing.pdf

Overall the point being that biologists don't enjoy automation for a
simple reason: it's annoyingly difficult and time consuming therefore
not worth investing in, unless specifically used for very high volume
experimentation. Since DIYbio is more ad-hoc 1-off experimentation,
it does not really make sense to apply the technology.


--
## Jonathan Cline
## jcline@ieee.org
## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223
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