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This is a really inspiring comment. I'm an engineering student who's kind of mentally stuck between the worlds of computing and bio. I want to do research in bi
by nynx 6y ago
This is a really inspiring comment. I'm an engineering student who's kind of mentally stuck between the worlds of computing and bio. I want to do research in biotech, but I'm having trouble finding the will to do it for some reason.
In a different vein, I've recently started designing a really cheap atomic force microscope, which I plan to open-source, so I think that may be a valuable addition to the bio and nanotech diy community.
- bergstromm466 6y ago> I've recently started designing a really cheap atomic force microscope, which I plan to open-source, so I think that may be a valuable addition to the bio and nanotech diy community. I hope you do
- nynx 6y agoThank you, hopefully external validation will push me to actually complete the project.
- heisenzombie 6y agoPlanning on using off-the-shelf probes in your AFM? How cheap can you get those nowadays? I remember being worried about crashing them too often with our modest lab budget.
- nynx 6y agoNo, I'll be manufacturing them. There are alternative ways of making cantilevers with atomically-sharp tips. Tungsten wire, for instance, can be etched down to less than a few nanometers. And the quartz clocks in almost all electronic devices can be decapped and used as an oscillator.
- dekhn 6y agoAFM isn't really used in biology.
- infinite8s 6y agoBut it is used a lot in biophysics!
- dekhn 6y agoIt is? I mean, that was my PhD, but I don't recall anybody ever using AFM for biology. Huh, apparently now they do.
- infinite8s 6y agoYeah lots of single molecule studies (strength of an actin filament, how much force needed to 'unfold' various proteins, etc). And this was 20 years ago when I was in grad school. Haven't kept up with the state of the art today.
- dekhn 6y agointeresting. all the people doing that in my day (also 20 years ago) used fluorescent microscopes (Ron Vale) with labelled protein. I can't see how you could unfold a protein using AFM, since it's in vacuum state, although I totally understand how optical tweezers would be fine to do this in solution.
- nynx 6y agoAFMs work in both air and fluid environments.