Introducing the Light Bulb PCR
January 11, 2011
PCR machines are too expensive for biologists who want to build their own labs. A couple of weeks ago I struck on a publication by Brian Blais on the DIYbio forum detailing a working PCR machine that he built in 2002 using only a light bulb and a steel pot. Oddly no one else has expounded on this idea, so I decided to build a better prototype with an arduino and only products available from Home Depot and Radio Shack.
In the end it cost me less than $50 to build this machine (including the $30 arduino). There are about a hundred different ways I could think of improving upon my build, so this is only a start. I’ll be sending it off to GenSpace in the next week to undergo some serious testing, but until then you can see the details of the build on this site:
russelldurrett.com/lightbulbpcr.html
Check it out and let me know what you think.
Here is a video explaining the project:
Light Bulb PCR from Russell Durrett on Vimeo.
This is excellent!
I’ve been thinking of doing something like this to make an incubator that I could program the temperature time course for complex incubation of yogurt and other multi-temp incubations.
But I really don’t know much about electronics.
Basically it’s the same principle, except doing it in a styrofoam cooler instead (and the cooler-light bulb incubator idea from Art Sci Bangalore).
The irony is that incandescent bulbs are going extinct. Soon. What will we use then?