Harness the Power of Proteins with the Cellerator
The Cellerator is a personal laboratory that makes synthetic biology easier.
A project by S James Parsons Jr featured on Hackaday is looking to make the process of producing proteins a simple household endeavor. The project is inspired by biotechnology and the capabilities it offers. For example, biotechnology uses biological processes to develop technologies and products that help improve our day to day lives. This can be making food, adding enhancements to food, creating vegetarian based meats, making tools for disease detection, developing vaccines, and many more applications.
While all those applications may seem daunting, the Cellerator is being created to make synthetic biology easier and accessible to everyone. The Cellerator is a box that is being designed to be an enclosed lab. Included on the inside is a robotic arm which will be used to pick up and control tools inside the box. It consists of a RJ45 breakout board, HDMI breakout boards, magnets, a camera servo mount, an SG90 servo, a 8MP camera, pogo pins, and a custom “hand” to handle controlling the tools.
Currently used tools with the device include a 1cc syringe pipetter, a magnetic whisker, a 405nm termination laser, and a UV-C wand. Tools to be added in the future range from an ultrasonic homogenizer, to a microscope head for camera, to a vacuum gripper. The entire box will be operated through a GUI that will allow for selecting tools and telling the device what to do with the tools. A preliminary screenshot of the GUI is shown below.
Overall, the Cellerator still has more work to be done before it can be considered complete. To keep up with the most recent updates and check out Parsons Jr's project log yourself.