Sure it takes years of training to become a world class biologist, but now you can have fun with their equipment without slaving away in academia. Pearl Biotech is selling an electrophoresis gel box, an instrument used in the separation and characterization of DNA online. Electrophoresis is a safe procedure that is useful to molecular biologists but can be enjoyed by anyone. It’s a standard experiment in high school labs. The Pearl Gel Box is an open hardware device which means that anyone is free to build or adapt it as along as they share their modifications in a similar manner. Pearl Biotech sells a fully assembled version for $200. By providing a cheap entry level tool for genetics Pearl is helping generate interest in the field and supporting the do it yourself community.

The concept of an open hardware electrophoresis gel box was discussed on the biology wiki OpenWetWare. Teams in the International Genetic Engineered Machine competition (iGem) and members of DIYbio.org both saw the need for and the benefit from having a cheap version of this often used tool. If you’ve worked in molecular biology you’ve used an electrophoresis gel box. While the Pearl Gel Box itself is pretty cool, the more impressive development here is that a community of amateur and professional scientists got together on an open forum, decided what kind of tools they needed, and someone then took the initiative and created one of those tools. This process is the sort of rapid response that makes an internet based scientific community so compelling.
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