Question: How do you think your cell-breaking device could aid people in other situations?

Amelia Markey answered on 17 Jun 2011:

Hi, thanks for the question.

Well my device won’t just break cells open. I need to break them open to release their DNA. Once I have this then the device can copy the DNA and store it.

The whole point in this is that working with cells and DNA is very tricky. You don’t want to get any other cells or DNA in there other than the ones you want to look at otherwise you could be measuring the wrong thing. Take a crime scene. There’s a spot of blood on the floor and you want to find out whose it is. You collect this blood and take it back to the lab to test. There’s not a lot of DNA in a small bit of blood so you need to make more DNA to test. So you break the cells in the blood open, take their DNA and copy it. At any point while you are doing this you could get some of your cells or DNA in their or someone else’s who happens to be in the lab. This isn’t good as it would confuse your results and you might not be able to tell who the blood spot belongs to. The same situation is true for scientists who are working on DNA and need to copy it.

As my device breaks open the cells and copies the DNA in water droplets that are completely isolated from the outside world no other cells or DNA can get in there. This means that the DNA produced and stored on my device would be really clean and much better for other scientists to use. It will also be automated which means that all a person has to do is put the cells on the device and then collect the DNA at the other end, the device does the rest.

So not only will be device help other scientists do their work (and so help the people their work will help) but it could also lead to better diagnosis of diseases and better results for CSI teams.

Hope that answers your question!