Difference between revisions of "Team:Open Science Global/Hardware"

Every frugal biofoundry definitely needs frugal hardware. The cost of hardware has been a huge challenge to most biofounries. Being able to have access to open frugal hardware designs will go a long way to increase the quality of research being conducted. As part of the friendzymes initiative, we seek to create biofoundries across several countries where we will design and build several hardware components to facilitate and improve the quality of the enzyme manufacturing.

We have three hardware components that are essential for frugal enzyme manufacturing, purification, and quantification. We explain in detail the construction and outcomes of these frugal hardware we are building to add to our biofoundries.

Frugal bioreactor

Necessary for producing the vessels of our enzymes, B. subtilis, in large amounts for them to secrete our polymerases in large amounts.

Frugal Chromatography column

Necessary for separating desired proteins of interest after our vessels have successfully expressed and secreted them.

Frugal Fluorescent Plate Reader

Necessary for having a readout on the purity of the enzymes obtained through our chromatography column.

In every laboratory activity, you need hardware, gadgets, materials, and support equipment. In this section, we give you an overview of our progress in the area of hardware and tool development. We will go through some important steps to build, test and evaluate the three basic hardware we will be building for our biofoundry. Building these hardware will not on;y facilitate and improve the quality of research but will overall help save massively on the cost of acquiring commercial hardware or constantly purchasing reagents supplies from commercial sources. In developing countries, where access to a constant supply of reagents is a major problem, these hardware components will help eliminate this challenge. The overall total cost in building these hardware is approximately $4,000, which is several thousands of dollars less than commercial hardwares of the same design. In terms of performance, these frugal hardwares are comparable to their commercial counterparts.

For the keen-eyed reader, we would recommend our "Friendzymes Hardware Handbook", which will give you a comprehensive guide to other frugal hardware that you can try build for you and your community biolab.

Bioreactors play a key role in the production of proteins and enzymes for the development and global deployment of biotechnology. These consist of vessels where a biological reaction or change takes place. The biological systems involved can be enzymes, proteins, and microorganisms. By providing a favorable growth environment, bioreactors meet the needs of the biological system involved so that a high production yield is achieved.

For the design of a bioreactor, it is necessary to control the operating parameters that favor cell growth and metabolism of cells or enzymes. The main parameters are dissolved oxygen concentration, pH, temperature, and mixing. Commercial solutions priced between $580 to approximately $4,500 for 5-litre capacities are expensive for low-resource labs and do not allow for customization and maintenance. The development of low-cost, open-source bioreactors could help develop a more accessible biotechnological infrastructure that reduces financial barriers to the development of future bioengineers.

The Friendzymes Open Science Global team seeks to accelerate the deployment of hardware needed to democratize biotechnology worldwide through the development of two bioreactor builds made with accessible materials, open-source, automatic controls, and a low cost of USD 82 - 162 dollars.

Design and Assembly

The design of the proposed bioreactor is of the batch type. It consists of three main parts: A) Container and thermal insulation jacket , B) sensors and actuators and C) Electronic control system. The materials needed to build it are:

The Friendzymes Open Science Global team seeks to accelerate the deployment of hardware needed to democratize biotechnology worldwide through the development of two bioreactor builds made with accessible materials, open-source, automatic controls, and a low cost of USD 82 - 162 dollars.