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Post by nicollas on Apr 20, 2016 0:17:20 GMT -5
OMG I just want one like yours. As i'm a noob at electronic, i'm afraid i'll just pass.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Apr 20, 2016 20:39:40 GMT -5
interesting. But shouldn't you put more orange plexiglass infront or behind the exhaust vent for safety? |
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Post by darrenabbey on Apr 20, 2016 20:40:16 GMT -5
OMG I just want one like yours. As i'm a noob at electronic, i'm afraid i'll just pass. I spent several years thinking about the project before I set about actually doing anything. After I get some of the experimentation done, to see if this idea actually works... then you'll just have more motivation to learn the skills you need. |
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Post by darrenabbey on Apr 20, 2016 20:48:33 GMT -5
interesting. But shouldn't you put more orange plexiglass infront or behind the exhaust vent for safety? I've definitely thought about it. I want to maintain effective ventilation, as the lamps in the confined space have the potential to build up some heat that could negatively impact any seeds, so I can't just block the vent. I could put some strips of the plexiglass inside the wall of the oven, perpendicular to the direction of airflow. This would impair ventilation some, but would also reduce the amount of UV-C getting out. |
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Post by nicollas on Apr 21, 2016 2:47:04 GMT -5
Are the risks only when the bulb is on, or are their any hazards when opening the door ? If it is only when running it is easy to program the oven to run in a few minutes and then leave the room
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Apr 21, 2016 20:39:21 GMT -5
Are the risks only when the bulb is on, or are their any hazards when opening the door ? If it is only when running it is easy to program the oven to run in a few minutes and then leave the room Yes, i'm mildly curious to know if you were able to tap into the existing electronics. Based on your testing it looked like you were. Im assuming you just ripped out the microwave generator cube thingy and wired up a standard 120vac uv light bulb. In which case the microwave timer and safety button cutoff (when the door is open) should still work. |
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Post by darrenabbey on Apr 21, 2016 22:21:24 GMT -5
All of the control electronics are intact, so the bulbs are turned off well before the door is opened. ........ Now, back to what started this conversation... I will post updates on the project here as they come up. Any details on how you've been thinking of building your device? |
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andyb
gardener
Posts: 179
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Post by andyb on Apr 22, 2016 2:02:03 GMT -5
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Post by starbuckwhy on Apr 22, 2016 23:47:43 GMT -5
...Now, back to what started this conversation... I will post updates on the project here as they come up. Any details on how you've been thinking of building your device? I got a pretty bad cold, flu, pneumonia, thing, just getting over it now. it was all I could do to keep up with my planting schedule. I found out my zea diploperennis might not be diploperennis, so the two seedlings that came up (of the ten or so seeds planted) might be worthless for the project. I managed to get a copy of that paper you guys recommended for helping me calculate the right radiation dosage, exposure timing, etc. but haven't sat down to slog my way through it with a highlighter yet. at this point, I'm thinking that the x-ray machine is going to be something for next year. I can build the housing in January 2017 and have it assembled and ready for testing in late February to march. that way I will have a month to work out the kinks while running seedlings through it. that will also give me a chance to run the project past some friends of friends who know a little about electrical engineering. wish I had something more exciting to report. but your project seems to be coming along really well. thanks for asking, and thank you even more for sharing your work. |
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Post by darrenabbey on Apr 24, 2016 2:58:19 GMT -5
wish I had something more exciting to report. but your project seems to be coming along really well. thanks for asking, and thank you even more for sharing your work. The hardware has, yes, but other things have gotten in the way of me doing the actual testing with seeds to determine if this machine will do the job. I'm looking forward to the development of your x-ray machine, design details, and results. X-rays generate a different class of mutations than UV-C, so they both definitely have a role in generating genetic diversity in plants (mutation breeding). In the end, I wouldn't mind building on myself, once your story has shown me how. :-) |
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Apr 24, 2016 16:19:55 GMT -5
I'm just following both projects as a curiosity. I had heard long ago mutation breeding was a thing, but i guess i had just assumed they didnt do it anymore or that there wasn't much merit in it. It seems that i may have judged and assumed too quickly. I will be watching both projects with interest and may attempt building one or both machines in the future. I might eventually use it on ornamental corn, but i think my first interest would be something like peas since i'm already working with those more at the moment. I would be curious to see what kind of diversity it could produce on TPS or TSPS though, even tomatoes (or even squash).
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Post by templeton on Apr 24, 2016 18:46:14 GMT -5
darrenabbey, could you paint the inside of the vent area with a UV absorbing paint? You could just use some thin plywood over the door area, but you would then loose the spooky 1960's glowing SciFi lab look. I hope you wear a suitable scare wig when you are working on this - appearances are everything. And do you have a mute, but devoted assistant?  And you gotta have a great big switch on the wall of the cellar...you DO work in a cellar, I hope?  Seriously, I love that you are working on this. I have some reservations about how many seedlings you might need to raise to find a 'useful' mutation - presumably most will be deleterious or fatal. One question - Are the levels of UV to achieve mutations lower than the threshold for smashing up other bits of the cell machinery that would make the cell unworkable? T 
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Post by darrenabbey on Apr 24, 2016 20:23:30 GMT -5
darrenabbey , could you paint the inside of the vent area with a UV absorbing paint? You could just use some thin plywood over the door area, but you would then loose the spooky 1960's glowing SciFi lab look. I hope you wear a suitable scare wig when you are working on this - appearances are everything. And do you have a mute, but devoted assistant? And you gotta have a great big switch on the wall of the cellar...you DO work in a cellar, I hope? It is actually in my basement lab... There is actually very little glowing coming out the front while in use. The photo was a bit of an elongated exposure (for effect). If I coated the inner-spaces of the wall with fluorescent phosphors... it would absorb and convert some of the UV... it would also make the light coming out of that space much more visually bright. Seriously, I love that you are working on this. I have some reservations about how many seedlings you might need to raise to find a 'useful' mutation - presumably most will be deleterious or fatal. One question - Are the levels of UV to achieve mutations lower than the threshold for smashing up other bits of the cell machinery that would make the cell unworkable? That is a very good question. The general idea from research I've read involving mutation breeding is that you dose the seeds at a level which results in a ~50% germination failure. This would mean that every survivor is really likely to have one or more mutations, that didn't happen to be fatal. Higher doses will minimize the viable results, without dramatically improving availability of mutations. Lower doses will mean more seeds without any mutations. This all seems to be a conjecture, as I haven't come across any research actually testing the results of different exposure levels. UV/chemicals/Xray are all doing other things to the cells of a seed. Some of the mutagenic potential for these processes is actually due to that secondary damage. Damaged proteins/chemicals/etc. in the cell can then damage DNA later. One experiment I'm planning to do will have a batch of seeds that are UV-c exposed while dry and another batch of seeds that are exposed after they've been soaked in water (for some yet-to-be-determined interval). The idea being that the seeds which have woken up are more likely to be able to survive the accumulated damage generated during treatment. This will probably mean they can take a higher UV-c dose before being killed by DNA damage, but it also should mean that all those secondary damage effects will be less likely to kill the cell (while the DNA is still getting hit). There is very little published research on using UV-C as a mutagen in plants. (Most of it is much lower doses being used to treat pollen.) Most of these things are simply an unknown at this point. |
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Post by darrenabbey on Apr 24, 2016 20:32:25 GMT -5
I'm just following both projects as a curiosity. I had heard long ago mutation breeding was a thing, but i guess i had just assumed they didnt do it anymore or that there wasn't much merit in it. It seems that i may have judged and assumed too quickly. I will be watching both projects with interest and may attempt building one or both machines in the future. I might eventually use it on ornamental corn, but i think my first interest would be something like peas since i'm already working with those more at the moment. I would be curious to see what kind of diversity it could produce on TPS or TSPS though, even tomatoes (or even squash). It is a pretty active methodology in agricultural research for the production of new strains. If you wanted to tweak one trait in a premier strain (like making an awesome orange into an awesome seedless orange), then mutation breeding might be the way to go. It will introduce relatively little genetic variation into the samples being selected compared with the wholesale mixing of genetics that standard breeding processes produce. Another aspect that I realized recently is that it allows an organization to generate selectable genetic diversity from within their own germplasm resources. This means they don't have to license germplasm from other organizations and so won't have to pay them licensing fees associated with the use of that external germplasm in the final released varieties. These days it is a simple thing for a big organizations to sequence any new strain produced by someone they licensed seed to, thus they can know if the germplasm was used in the new product above whatever threshold triggers ongoing license fees. It is also far simpler from a technical perspective than the various genetic engineering technologies, since you don't need to know the biology/genetics of the plant in excruciating detail for it to be useful. That most of the organizations against GMOs tend to not consider mutation breeding to be problematic also has helped encourage the use of this technique. All that said, organizations using these techniques might want to be quiet about it because people seem to freak out any time you mention radiation/chemicals/mutations. |
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Post by darrenabbey on Apr 24, 2016 20:42:58 GMT -5
I would be curious to see what kind of diversity it could produce on TPS or TSPS though, even tomatoes (or even squash). I suspect that tomatoes and squash seed might need some heroic efforts to mutate with UV-C. Tomato seeds -might- work, but experimentation is definitely needed. Ideally, I would get a large batch of identical seed from some inbred line to work with. If the genetics of the seed are mixed up (or F1 hybrid), then it would be hard to tell if anything was happening. Squash seeds are definitely too big for UV-C... but, I figure I could surgically intervene so as to expose the embryo in a batch of seeds before treatment. I've got a large batch of basil seeds to experiment with. I think their seeds will be small enough to work. TPS (True Potato Seed) would likely be genetically heterogeneous, so it would be harder to be sure what was happening. I suppose you'd have to grow a large batch of seeds as a control, to illustrate the diversity present in the seeds, as part of such experiments. What is TSPS? ---- Most seeds would be effected by Xray without such efforts. The dosage would have to be determined per machine, but otherwise it should work. Getting enough focused output from an Xray machine to treat seeds at the right level without costing too much is an engineering problem that I'm definitely interested in seeing the results of. The sort of mutations that Xrays generate (chromosomal breaks, rearrangements, etc.) can be problematic. If the chromosomes are messed up enough the plant will not cross with others of its species, which might be an intended goal. All these complications are why the professionals tend to use some nasty chemistry to do the job. This is something that neither I nor starbuckennis seem interested in playing with. |
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And you gotta have a great big switch on the wall of the cellar...you DO work in a cellar, I hope? 