RT @MWNautilus: The Collection of Bespoke #Laboratory #Equipment (#COBLE): #3Dprint your own #lab equipment:.#DIYbi….

DIB-BOT is a cheap, open-source robot that can improve your DIB workflows, with massive time (and sanity) savings that come with automation. At the very least, I hope that this work serves as inspiration for someone else to go down a similar path & invent their own robot help!

What do you want to know?.

In the end, it was actually pretty straightforward. Strap a nanoinjector to a 3D printer, do some rudimentary electronics, and learn gcode (the language that all 3D printers use to navigate x/y/z). And it works really well! Particularly for making DIBs.

I want to acknowledge again, @V_Saggiomo for the inspiration for this idea. When this post popped up on my feed in late 2022, I started thinking about how I could adapt a 3D printer for my needs.

This is an extreme example - making just a 2-droplet DIB is easier, and takes less time. But still a very manual, low-throughput method, with a not great yield (at least in my hands). I wanted something easier, more automated. so I got to work

In Matt's lab, we didn't have access to a modern, digital micromanipulator. Making this image took me the better part of an hour, painstakingly depositing and moving droplets around with an old school micromanipulator.

If you punch "Droplet Interface Bilayer" into Google Scholar, you'll find a lot of groups worldwide using them, typically using a method based on a great Nature Protocol from @LeptihnLab and @markianwallace. Now almost 10 years old - wow! .

This work was done with @phatmattbaker and Shelley Wickham (Syd Uni). We were trying to build water-in-oil droplet networks, specifically DIBs and DHBs. (and then use the bilayers to play with DNA-based membrane pores, but we never got that far)

I won't repeat my recent thread verbatim - it goes into a lot more detail about the story and data:.

Good news our work developing DIB-BOT is now available on @biorxivpreprint! . If you're interested in. -artificial cells.-water/oil droplets.-3D printing.-open-source tech.-automating tedious tasks. you should read the paper, and this thread 🧵.

RT @KGoepfrich: Scientists, ethic ists, philosophers, writers, filmmakers, journalists: Join us in Rome for a discussion about what it real….

RT @tania_patino_: A new approach to visualize 🧬 #DNAorigami within living cells by @leochou0814 lab! 🧫🔬✨It was a great pleasure to write t….

RT @SpruijtLab: Can coacervates help form life’s building blocks?.In our new work in @NatureComms, Jiahua & @DrManzarsial show that ferricy….

More awesome open science from @V_Saggiomo . I will definitely be using this to sort droplets by size!.

RT @AlexCook222: New article on complex coacervate artificial cells now online. Thanks very much to Bruno (@ciqususc) for the collab, and o….

RT @RicciLab: Out this week in @angew_chem: we introduce for the first time ELIDIS, an Enzyme-Linked DNA Displacement assay for the electro….

RT @NatureNano: New content online: Interlinking spatial dimensions and kinetic processes in dissipative materials to create synthetic syst….

As @V_Saggiomo says, the Ender3 is the cheapest cartesian robot you can buy!. And Gcode (the code that tells 3D printers how to move) is surprisingly easy to learn. Give it a go! I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

So, want to build one? well, here is the Github:. It's incomplete but I will be updating it as I build another DIB-BOT here at @MolHorizons @uowresearch. And a preprint will be uploaded before xmas. .

Finally - we can use the DIB-BOT for biologically relevant/interesting questions, such as, is my pore actually a pore?. This is using the canonical pore alpha-hemolysin