...And it involves large sums of money. Last night I put in an order for an OpenPCR machine from openpcr.com. Their unit costs $639 with domestic shipping included, comes as a build it yourself kit (minus having to solder boards), and promises to change the world as long as people actually find out about it.
I know you may be thinking, has our blog author fallen off the one true faith? Given up neuroscience? The answer is a distinct "Not really." In the realm of neuroscience I've found myself asking more and more how does a certain set of receptor signals change how the neuron works forever more? Inevitably, once you follow a few signal transductions -and an enzyme cascade for many more steps-, this leads to genetic expression alterations. As I've said before, I feel that the multi-disciplinary part of neuroscience is lacking, and so I'm becoming a geneticist to become a better neuroscientist.
Over the next few months I will be continuing my neuroscience pursuits (which I'll catch you up with in a more detailed post later), but will also be pursuing genetics (and thus the heart of diybio) with new vigor. I'll probably be using this blog as a record of, and sounding board for, those experiments with genetics, so don't be shocked to see a lot more pure genetics material on this blog in the near future (though I'll be sure to tie it back into neuroscience wherever possible).
I hope you'll tolerate my seemingly bifurcating pursuits and trust that I really do have an end goal in mind, and if not an end goal then a plan which will shine some much needed light on just about every bio topic that exists today. Look forward to a real update soon, I've been too busy working on my various projects to post about them, but couldn't contain my need to sing "The Hills Are Alive, With The Sound Of OpenPCR" from the mountain tops.
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