Lego pieces are used for almost everything. We can build a small-scale castle, the figure of a little mermaid, a life-size car, a Star Wars ship or even a house of more than 12,000 square meters. They can also be useful for scientific investigations using a gradient mixer, speeding up and simplifying the construction of small structures from DNA.
Researchers at Arizona State University (ASU) have managed to build a robot made of Lego, capable of rapidly performing an important step to create machines made of DNA, essential for the development of research that addresses questions such as how natural molecular machines, such as proteins, work.
This Lego built gradient mixer performs a procedure to mix the liquid contents of the tubes. First, by tilting the tubes from vertical to horizontal; then, turning them quickly. This creates a single liquid with a density that decreases evenly from bottom to top, according to NewScientisit.
Surprising as it may seem, almost the entire machine is built from toy parts: gears, connecting blocks, and two motors. The only exception is the tube holder that the researchers had to 3D print, notes this outlet.
Its creators ensure that the robot's design is a smaller and faster version of the more traditional gradient mixers, but equally powerful. According to its creators, the Lego robot created the necessary density gradient in just one minute.
In addition, the process is cheaper. It has cost around $350 to build with Lego, about $100 cheaper than store-bought devices.
What started as a final project in an undergraduate laboratory course may become an important discovery because of the benefits it offers scientists, they insist.
"In light of recent advances in large-scale DNA origami production, our method offers an alternative for purifying DNA origami nanostructures in large quantities (grams) in resource-constrained settings," conclude the researchers of the study published in Plos One.
