Foldscope

The Genomic Integrity team has been looking into the best ways to get the cheek cell assays to be really DIYbio (or DIT research!) and has been testing open-source imaging methods at Hackuarium:

Inspiration

Many DIY microscopes exist already. This page from Hackteria describes a few...
The first Foldscope was developed at Stanford, by the group of Manu Prakash, and was published in PLOSOne.

First Tests

The first attempts to make Foldscopes relied on a vector graphic file found on the internet in Oliver Bosewell's blog.
We used the laser-cutter in the maker space (Made@UC) to cut the pattern, and simple glass beads for lenses.
Even though the beads were 'up-cycled' from microbiology experiments (even scratched), the results seemed promising enough that low magnification (140X) borosilicate glass lenses were ordered.

Further information

• The project to assess your own cells for DNA damage at Hackuarium
• website - Action for Genomic Integrity through Research!
• Twitter account for AGiR! @AGIRgenomes