Spider silk DNA arrived!!!! And so did my new robot! (Patreon)

Two very exciting quick updates.

First, after putting in the order in October, my spider silk DNA has finally arrived! We also ordered some primers to do a little bit of modification to the plasmid so that we can add a fluorescent reporter and make sure that the silk is actually being produced once we add the DNA to our yeast. That process takes all of about 2 hours, so if all goes well within a week or two we could finally have our first bit of synthetic silk. I honestly can't believe we're finally at this point, and *knock on wood* could finally be making some progress on this project. More updates to come soon hopefully.

Exciting thing number 2, check out what just arrived!!!!!

This is the OT-2 liquid handling robot. It's basically a biolab in a box and OOOOOooooeeee does this thing pack a ton of capability in a small space. I've got 2 videos officially planned and then a whole pile more to come afterwards. The official ones are to first build some custom parts and modules to add even more capability to the machine and really test it's limits. The second is to use all that capability to do an entire cloning run (DNA extraction, mutation PCR to isolate a gene, restriction digest of host plasmid, ligation of gene into plasmid, transformation of DNA into bacteria) without opening the machine. This way the machine can essentially take one of the fluorescent proteins and slowly mutate it until it makes new colors. All totally automated other than taking plates out and restocking the reagents at the start.

Once those are done though, sky is the limit. I'm thinking of making a custom head for the machine to do 3d bio printing. For some reason I feel like printing a set of antlers and growing bone on the scaffolds. No real reason other than it sounds awesome and weird.

And beyond that I'll just be using this for many of my bio needs. Just set it up, hit go, let it work while I do something else. So expect to start seeing it in videos soon.

That's all for now, stay tuned for more!