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Biomeme Could Turn Your iPhone Into a Tiny Disease-Detecting Lab
- xkcd-sucks 12y agowhere to begin... Building the device to require a smartphone is such a bad idea. The same functionality (battery, light detector, datalogging) could be added for negligible cost. It seems like involving an iphone is simply a way to capitalize on the credulity of naive investors. RT-PCR is notoriously difficult to do well. This is because RNA is unstable and nucleases (which destroy RNA) are a ubiquitous environmental contaminant. People that work with RNA typically set aside clean rooms and dedicated tools for working with samples. Can we expect users of this product to be careful re: cleanliness? The reason 23andMe works is because its data is good, and the reason its data is good is because they generate it themselves (and, they're working with DNA, not with RNA). The operating cost is mostly consumable stuff: Enzymes and DNA primers. DNA is cheap and stable, but the enzymes (reverse transcriptase, dna polymerase) are expensive and unstable. Will the device contain an integrated -20C freezer to store the enzymes? Has the company found a supplier of enzymes that are super cheap and of an acceptable quality? If so, lots of people in the research community will want to know.
- gone35 12y agoSpot on. It's interesting how one of the original goals of the technical co-founders was to develop an open diagnostics hardware platform for the research community. Perhaps a consortium-type non-profit structure would have been a better fit, incentive-wise.