In biotechnology we have 'hello world' experiments too, that simply demonstrate that something works as it should. In genetics one can visualize and characterize DNS, this is sometimes called in CSI-like terms 'DNA fingerprinting'. This photograph shows such a fingerprint:
DNA fingerprinting is now also possible at our Open Wetlab. With this technique, one can use DNA traces to find criminals, detect diseases, selects embryos, indentify bodies, predict genetic disorders, find origins (like fatherhood), check for horse meat in your food, find your ideal biological partner (DNA dating!), etc.
Now that this technique becomes more and more mainstream, this will have strong implications on privacy and identity issues. Of course, this technique can be hacked too, as I will show on the next OHM gathering. It's not really plug & play, but I succeeded to fingerprint the bacterial Lambda-virus. Of course, the connoisseur will directly recognize the pattern 2027, 2322, 4361, 6557, 9416 and 23130 of the base pairs, if I add that I used HindIII restriction enzymes ;).
I only used Open Hardware to do this. This pdf gives a description of what I have done.
