[ExI] Fwd: DIY DNA synthesis (more)

Natasha Vita-More natasha at natasha.cc
Thu Apr 16 16:18:02 UTC 2009


How would you explain this idea of one type of bio-artifical eovlution as it
relates to the human progeny?


Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Bryan Bishop
Sent: Monday, April 13, 2009 3:09 PM
To: ExI chat list; kanzure at gmail.com
Subject: [ExI] Fwd: DIY DNA synthesis (more)

Kicking it up a notch.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bryan Bishop <kanzure at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 2:07 PM
Subject: DIY DNA synthesis (more)
To: diybio at googlegroups.com, kanzure at gmail.com

Hey all,

I sent an email to a friendly polymer-advocate and figure it should also be
archived here for prosperity's sake. I'm glad someone liked the idea of
do-it-yourself DNA synthesis. Here's the (unedited)
email--

Hey David,

So I was up this morning again doing some reading on ways that we could do
DIY DNA synthesis. I've produced a bibliography of interesting papers
relevant to the idea. For some reason when I first came across DNA
synthesis, I assumed it was only solid-phase, but I'm glad to find out that
there are photolabile-group-deprotection (etc.) methods that make it
possible to synthesize genomes via photolithography.

BibTeX bibliography:
http://heybryan.org/books/papers/bibliographies/DIY-DNA-synth.bib

Now, a friend of mine- the one on campus here building a reprap- suggested
using LCDs as a reprogrammable photomask. There are many papers that have
talked about doing this, and a few that actually demonstrate it. The oldest
papers go back into the late 1980s where they were talking about
electro-optical adaptive phase masks and such.
Anyway. That's pretty neat, but it requires this terribly large lense to
make it work.

But .. in my literature search .. I once found a paper describing
micromolding in microchannels via capillary force. In other words, the
polymers literally crawl up the channels and then cure. There has even been
a paper on doing this for making microemitters (organic/polymer LEDs). But
the problem with this method is that it requires 10^-6 torr for the vacuum
deposition process of the metal electrode or something.
Yikes. [[as it turns out, Hong H Lee and friends have a cathode contact
metal transfer method that can be used here, but it seems to also require
gnarly chemicals]]

Other papers talk about using ink-jet printers to print out OLEDs, which is
fine, but they still sometimes require those metal contacts.
Maybe there's a way around this? What I would like to be able to do is print
out a PCB pattern from my printer and use an ink-jet compatible polymer to
draw the LEDs. And then have a matrix-addressable-array of my tiny
microemitters (they don't have to be *too* tiny, and they don't have to last
forever)- so that I could rapidly switch the electronics on/off so that I
can activate light in different regions, or ideally control each LED
individually all at once. Anyway, that's just basic electronics.

Maybe you have some ideas or general directions in which to point me?
An electrodeless light-emitting diode may *sound* impossible or crazy, or
mad and crazy, but that's what I'm here for :-).

Ink-jet-printablephosphorescent organic light-emitting-diode devices
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=JSIDE80
00016000012001229000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes

I don't have access to that paper. Are you able to get it?

So, if there's a way to do LCD-based synthesis without the lense, that would
be ideal. But alternatively, printing out an array of LEDs isn't entirely
terrible, as long as the color "just so happens to be" the right wavelength
for the photocurible DNA synthesis steps. Blah. This is getting complicated.

But other than that, things sound like they are about to get interesting,
especially if you're able to "print out" genomes from an inkjet printer
(more or less).

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507
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