'It is not desktop publishing, it is desktop biofabbing'

Last week, I posted a video on a smart bot that knows how pipette.

The bot was created by members in MIT professor Jose Gomez-Marquez's lab.

Gomez-Marquez wanted to explain it more:

Accurate deposition of substances is currently a very small field in which players such as BioDot, MicroFab, Fuji, and Biofludix---all high end instrumentation makers with machines that start at around $20,000 (average prices, around $80,000).

They are very precise machines that the life sciences uses for accurate deposition of small volume fluids such as antibodies.

By hacking a more affordable machine, such as the MakerBot, and designing deposition systems like the one shown, we can increase access to smaller labs at home and in a developing country to do their own experimentation of small fluids handling.

This is important for the creation of lateral flow tests—such as the ones found in malaria and pregnancy tests.

Our goal is make labs around the world not just consumers of such diagnostics tests, but homegrown fabricators of them. It’s not desktop publishing, it’s desktop biofabbing.

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com