Biology enthusiasts, rejoice. A new project is developing a bio kit to make bioengineering easy as pie.
Making Biotechnology Accessible for Everyone
The Amino Project is a countertop bioreactor that is split into three sections to: 1. Transform components, 2. Grow them and 3. Culture them. The Amino was designed by the MIT Media Lab in collaboration with Synbiota to make a DNA creation and analysis program accessible to students and professionals alike, thus making DNA programs, bioengineering, synthetic biology and biotechnology accessible to all.
Learning by Doing
The Amino Project’s mission is to spread the concept of learning by doing and not through textbooks alone, and the kit, not only being easy to clean, is capable of handling a 9th grade experiment as well as one conducted by MIT scientists.
The Amino gives people the ability to incubate through a regular incubator or a shaker incubator, to execute automated culturing, make heat baths, for refrigeration via its temperature controls, and for data analysis through real time sensors and circulation controls.
Since it is a countertop sized bio lab, it makes it easier and more fun to grow living cells, and the project pledges that the Amino will help you to be able to create new fragrances, new flavors, new material, medicine, even make yogurt or brew your own beer.
You could grow and analyze your own E. coli or salmonella and collect data in real time. The proposed first experiment by the Amino team? Your own living, feeding nightlight.
The kit comes with a main culture chamber, media flasks for food, for sugars, controllers, transformation liquid vials, an instruction and data screen booklet, pipets and incubators.
The company proposes the possibility of having thousands, even millions of people working on finding the cure to all terminal diseases as opposed to a handful of doctors, sparking interest in chemistry and biology in young students in schools and museums, or even pursuing a related hobby like starting a brewery or making new perfumes. The possibilities seem endless with Amino, and it is a wonderful step toward biotechnological advances and biological research.
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