Mobilefuge: A low-cost, portable, open source, 3D-printed centrifuge that can be powered by a mobile phone

  1. Mohini Bhupathi
  2. Ganga Chinna Rao Devarapu

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Abstract

Background: A centrifuge is an essential piece of equipment for several biology and diagnostic applications such as pelleting cells and purifying nucleic acids, etc. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest for low-cost centrifuges that are alternatives to the commercially available centrifuges. In this article, we present a low-cost, open-source, 3D printed centrifuge (mobilefuge) that is portable, robust, stable, safe, easy to build and operate.

Methods: The mobilefuge was designed such that it doesn't require soldering or programming skills and can be built without any specialised equipment yet practical enough for high throughput use. More importantly, the mobilefuge can be powered from widely available 5V USB ports, including mobile phones and associated power supplies. This allows the mobilefuge to be used even in off-grid and resource limited settings.

Results: Performance of the mobilefuge is demonstrated by separating silica particles are from a suspension consisting of water and “glassmilk”. This separation process is one of the crucial steps in nucleic-acid amplification assays for reliable, low-cost diagnostic applications such as SARS-CoV2.

Conclusions: We believe that beyond the nucleic-acid assays, the mobilefuge can have several applications as a microcentrifuge in the field of biomedical research and diagnostics.

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  1. Version published to 10.12688/openreseurope.14998.1
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.06.21249280: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variable1: 3D-printed enclosure and Rotor 2) USB fan motor 3) Female to male USB cable 4) Self-adhesive damping pad (Optional).

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Preparation of “Glass milk” solution: To demonstrate that Mobilefuge can be useful for the purification process during the LAMP assays, we separate the silica particles from a suspension consisting of water and “glassmilk” using the Mobilefuge.
    LAMP
    suggested: (LAMP, RRID:SCR_001740)

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.01.06.21249280v1 on medRxiv