ABSTRACT
Standard molecular biology laboratories are usually made with complex, sophisticated, and expensive equipment. Unfortunately, most of these labs are not affordable for everyone. In this paper, we show how we built a portable bio lab BioBlocksLab, made of four modules: a centrifuge, a thermocycler, electrophoresis, and an incubator. We also propose a new version of a blockly programming language to describe experimental lab protocols, called BioBlocks 2.0, which is based on the Microsoft MakeCode platform from the open-source project Microsoft Programming Experience Toolkit (PXT). We run BioBlocks programs of real lab protocols to control different hardware modules with biological reagents and get positive results. We offer an easy, affordable, and open-source way for everyone to do experiments with Do-It-Yourself (DIY) portable bio-labs.
