Finally back in Ljubljana Urs, Oli and friends gave a workshop on how to build your own wild OpenPCR at BioTehna Lab.
The participants, all with solid biotech background, learned about resistive heaters, thermoelectric cooling using peltier elements and thermo sensors. After 4 hours and heavy soldering actions we had 2 complete PCR machines up and running. The next days the participants kind of took over the workshop and the mentors had to undergo strict instructions on lab practice and pipetting. The evening program with a science café was already in course when the first results of the electrophoresis gel came in. The reference machine (also DIY) and one of the newly build device showed amplification while no lines where to be seen on the tests for the second device. We assume that this is due to the not so well applied heated lid, as we saw quite some evaporation during the runs. This should be easy to fix with building a proper case.
The workshop and talk was part of the DITOs (Doing It Together Science / Soustvarjamo znanost,http://togetherscience.eu/) program.
Some photos from the workshop:
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