GADGET OF THE WEEK: BOY BUILDS HOME DNA TESTER
by Hazed
An enterprising teenager called Fred Turner wanted to figure out why he looked so different from his brother. He had straight brown hair but younger brother Gus bore curly red locks. Teenagers being the cruel beasts that they are, the pair had to suffer a lot of jibes accusing them of having different fathers.
Fred wanted to prove that this was not the case: it was down to the genetic mutation that causes red hair.
So the seventeen-year-old did something amazing. He built his own DNA testing machine, from odds and ends found around the house. The polymerase chain reaction machine that he constructed can magnify DNA strands ready for lab analysis.
Once his machine was ready, he took a swab of cells from inside Gus’ cheek, just like you see the swabs done on cop shows on TV. He released the DNA from the cells, added it to an enzyme and processed it in his machine for a couple of hours. He sent the resulting DNA sample to a lab, which reported back that Gus does, indeed, have the red hair mutation.
His brilliance has been rewarded, not only with the answer to the puzzle of his brother’s ginger locks, but with the title of UK Young Engineer of the Year - and a place at Oxford University to study biochemistry.
Source: http://www.dvice.com/2013-4-6/teenager-builds-dna-testing-machine-his-house
