Question: How does your device work?

Amelia Markey answered on 21 Jun 2011:

Well so far I’ve only designed the part that copies the DNA.

The DNA and chemicals to copy the DNA enter the device from a tube through the tubing (that’s the spiral you can see on the device). It gets to a point where it meets a flow of oil. At this point the oil break the aqueous DNA solution into tiny nano sized droplets. These droplets are carried by the flow of the oil around the spiral of tubing. The outside part of the aluminium, in which the tubing sits, is heated to 30 degrees C which is the temperature needed to copy the DNA.
Once this is done the droplets enter in centre part of the device, this is heated to 65 degrees C, which is the temperature needed to destroy the enzyme that copies the DNA and end the reaction.

The other parts have not been designed yet but I will have a bit to break the cells open in these tiny droplets. I can either do this with chemicals which will cause the cells to burst, with enzymes that destroy the proteins in the cells or by heating the cells until they burst.

The last bit will be a device to store the DNA. I want to do this by merging a few of the little droplets, these merged droplets will then be put in little wells in the device. Hopefully we can cool the device down so that the DNA in the wells freezes so it will be safely stored.