- This is no regular PC cooler,
but rather bio luminescent coolant that you are about to
watch us create with the help of the genetically engineered
bacteria that is behind us over there.
It, isn't the kind of thing you'd run in your PC 24/7
at least not exactly like this,
but the biotechnology involved blew my mind.
So, let's have a chat about how we built the world's first
bioluminescent gaming PC, or as I call it,
the angler fish.
(fierce hissing)
they don't have claws it's more like teeth,
but minor details...
Minor details like our sponsor War Thunder.
War Thunder is an online military vehicle combat game
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(upbeat techno music)
Let's go back in time
to before the angler fish came to life though.
Today we're joined by the fine folks from Nyoka Labs,
whose main area of focus
is creating a sustainable glow stick
by using bioluminescence to create the light instead
of harsh chemicals that can seep into the environment after
disposal.
In nature,
whether we're talking about a bacteria or a jellyfish,
bioluminescence is created by combining two main compounds,
luciferin and luciferase.
These are generic catchall words to describe actually a wide
variety of different chemicals.
Kind of like how we say a battery has to have
an anode and cathode,
but the exact materials that they're made of can vary
greatly.
The combo we're using today is derived from
Gaussia princeps,
a deep sea crustacean that naturally glows blue.
The only challenge is that these guys wouldn't be
particularly happy trapped inside a glow stick,
or your computer. So instead,
the folks from Nyoka Labs take the natural recipe from
these guys,
and then they get bacteria to fart out those same compounds
that are needed to produce the reaction.
The first step of this process is locating the chunk of a
creature's DNA that is responsible for bioluminescence.
To find the specific sequence,
you need one protein to separate the two strands of DNA
and read a single strand, creating RNA.
The RNA is the code that will produce another protein that
will execute a function in the cell.
When bioluminescence is occurring, you freeze the cell,
read the RNA that's floating around in there,
and then you try to link it to the function of interest.
Once you've figured out,
what bit of genetic code is responsible for bioluminescence.
You order a primer off the internet,
which contains short segments of the DNA.
You need to make copies of along with DNA segments that are
already present in the bacteria.
You then take a boatload of the DNA primer and chuck it into
this guy right here, the thermal cycler.
This bad boy heats up the DNA to around a hundred degrees
Celsius, at which the double strands separate in to single
strands because they can't stay together at such high
temperatures.
Then, you just get to hope that when it cools back down,
the segments from your primary DNA will bind to the regions
of the longer DNA strands that are complimentary.
From here a protein comes in and repairs
the DNA turning that single strand
back into a double strand.
And in the process adding the bit of DNA code that you need
for bioluminescence.
Do this 20 or so more times,
And you get loads of copies of the DNA that you want to put
into your bacteria to make it glow.
From here, you shoot all that DNA into the bacteria,
essentially injecting code,
and the bacteria will read that code and create the
luciferase needed for our bioluminescent reaction.
But enough talk!
Let's do it.
Thanks to reductions in the cost of equipment and supplies.
This kind of biological science
can actually be performed at home.
All you will need is some pipettes,
whoops.
some pipette tips,
some kind of media.
So this is essentially the food for our live bacteria.
We'll get to those in a moment.
You'll need some live bacteria.
As well as a,
OHH!
centrifuge and naturally safety equipment.
Safety first ladies and gentlemen.
Now, obviously we're going to do this cooking show style.
Since you guys don't want to wait 24 hours for our DNA
altered E. coli to grow in our nutrient solution here.
So, we would then take that which instead of looking like,
nah, mildly dehydrated,
but still relatively healthy pee,
would look like extremely
cloudy, You need to go see your doctor pee.
We take that.
We throw it into our centrifuge here for probably somewhere
in the neighborhood of
five,
ten minutes,
something along those lines.
We pour off the extra and we end up with this.
Concentrated E. Coli.
Oh, don't worry.
This is not the pathogenic kind.
This is like specifically engineered to be safe.
Otherwise, they wouldn't let me handle it.
Right?
That's true. That's true.
So I will not be making any
(clears throat)
unscheduled visits to the bathroom.
Now!
Oh, it stinks. Okay.
We can actually use this to create a reaction.
Check this out. So we've got. Hold on.
I've got my luciferase, and I've got my luciferin.
I want my luciferin.
I'm going to take a hundred microliters of this.
They don't believe I can do it properly, I know it.
I'm gonna go down to the first stop.
Slowly draw it back up.
Wow. Look at that.
The system works it's right at the mark.
Is that, is that what it's supposed to do?
All right. Cool.
Here we go. Then we're going to drop this puppy in here.
See you later, and watch this. Oh wow.
You can actually see it's working already.
What?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Don't worry. I got this, got this.
You know what? I'll shake it first then we'll hit the light.
Okay. Go for it! Go for it!
Oh, there's another light. Damn.
WHOA!
That is sick!
Get it? Cause it's a E. Coli.
(laughter)
And this is a completely organic reaction. Right?
It'll glow more, oh heat. Right.
That makes sense. Enzymes.
See, I remember a couple of things from, uh,
you know, grade 10 science.
(aggressively growls)
I've been informed it's not heat
Speeding up the reaction,
It's actually oxygen that causes the Luciferin
to glow more brightly.
Oh wow.
It's already dying.
It's dying.
Oh, it's back!
Whoa!
Okay, hold on a second. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Okay. So let's just get some oxygen into it.
No, no, don't worry.
I'm not gonna,(scuffs) I'm not gonna.
I wasn't going to do that.
Okay.
But now we'll probably have more oxygen in the air in here.
So we shake it.
Do we get a brighter glow?
Eh, hard to say?
There it goes.
So good for you.
You made an unhealthy pee looking disease vile that glows.
Obviously, this is not the end game.
So, the next step is we run this through
what's called a nickel column.
Our protein was engineered with a histidine tag, and that is
going to be naturally attracted to the nickel, along the
outsides of this column as we're pouring it through.
So, what we can do, is we pour the whole thing through,
all the garbage makes it through to the end.
Then, we actually sever that histidine tag, and we wash it
through, and we ended up with nothing but our luciferase.
So this, should give us a much stronger reaction. Right?
You guys aren't, you guys aren't setting me up here to do a
lame demo are you?
They wouldn't do that.
They seem... they seem like nice people.
This is my 10 microliters.
Okay.
Just 10 microliters this time.
This is the tricky part.
Okay, we ready?
There's just one site on our protein where the reaction
takes place.
So you're going to see that if we,
if we kept this completely still, the like the end product
would end up kind of gunking it up and that yellow glow
would actually go away after a while. But if we mix it,
things get really interesting.
Okay, let's kick the lights.
Oh yeah. You can actually, oh, that's cool.
You can see where it's kind of seeping down into that.
Okay ready?
(excited screeching)
Oh wow.
That's fantastic.
And it's not cloudy!
No trip to the doctor today.
And the best part is because of the washing process.
There is no E. coli inside it.
Uh, honestly though,
my kids aren't that into yellow glow sticks.
So, um, what can we do about that?
Oh, let's try another color shall we?
They wouldn't let us do science
with our LTT store water bottle,
but they're great for drinking out of alright.
Gotta use. We'll use your flask.
There's no pipetting? This is just like a dried,
ready to rock glow stick.
Oh, damn.
Wow. The green one's really bright.
Holy smokes.
Whoa ho ho!
That is awesome!
Holy crap. I bet you can even see my face Andy.
- [Andy] Here, let me crank it, oh!
- Oh, that is so cool.
So then, conceivably,
if you wanted to make like a leader of this,
you could just...
you could do that?
This one lasts about 20 minutes. Okay.
Can you make it last longer?
- Mhm.
- Right. Or conceivably, you could design, you know
glow stick capsules that have like a slow release mechanism
of some sort or something along those lines too.
- Mhm.
- Right.
- Got it.
I guess they saw it at the beginning of the video.
So there's no real surprise to spoil.
Can we put it in the computer now?
Let's do it!
Uh oh, What? The computer is not done Alex?
You had one job.
Research the video,
Get in touch with these guys, Write the video,
build the computer.
- Wrangle me one job.
All right, let's have some fun here ladies and gentlemen.
All right.
Uh, hit me with maybe like 300 mils this time.
We're gonna, we're gonna,
launch our own line of like graduated
cylinders and beakers, and (bleep) for you guys. Okay?
So, this is where things get a little bit trickier.
Yeah.
We're going to have to run it for a little bit to kind of
kick some of these bubbles out of here.
Okay. So, so far we've put in what?
1500 mils? Something like that?
Oh no. 1200.
Here we go ladies and gentlemen.
Uh well,
- No, it's not.
Now it is.
- Why did it stop and start again?
Okay, Now we have water on our motherboard.
Good news is I think the GPU backplate took
the brunt of that.
Um.
That's only five mils?
- Is there a way to... all of that is five mils?
- Oh God. This is going to take forever.
Okay. Well.
- [Unknown Voice] Oh, there we go. Beautiful.
- Okay. Funnel-ception.
The good news is we're close.
Does anyone still know how much water is in here?
- Oh God. I have to get all of that in there.
Funnel me.
Okay. Okay.
It's a little smelly.
So, do you want to do just a little bit at first?
And should we, do you want to turn the system off?
How do you guys want to do this?
What's going to give us max effect here?
This is the big moment.
Whoa, that
is
super cool.
Okay. Here we go.
You getting this Sandy? Get a close up.
I'm going to give it another little jet here.
(whispering) wow that's so cool.
Okay.
I'm going. I'm going for it now.
That is freaking bright.
Oh, that is so cool!
Is the density of this one, like higher or something?
- But why is it sitting at the bottom like that?
It's time.
Ha look, we spilled some.
Now that's an easy way to find a leak in your water cooling
system.
That is so,
cool.
That is a very different effect isn't it?
Compared to when you have like a UV light
and then a UV reactive additive in the water
because the, the water itself is what's glowing.
That it crazy cool.
Now obviously constantly topping up your computers,
enzymes is not a very practical way to get it to light up.
Not to mention that once you've got microparticles whipping
around in your loop,
the damage to your CPU block is going to make the rust in
our whole room water cooling system
look like a piece of cake.
But, it's not like this is being sold
as an EK Crile fuel competitor.
So, the good news for Nyoka's plan,
creating glow sticks,
is that for that use,
it might just be perfect.
In your typical dollar store glow stick,
the chemicals used to create the light effect are so nasty.
That is probably a good thing,
that we couldn't find a proper recipe
in this classic episode of Channel Super Fun.
And, even worse, to contain these chemicals,
very sturdy plastic is needed.
So, every time a glow stick gets cracked,
it'll be bright
and admittedly, very fun for an hour or two.
Then it'll sit not breaking down for a thousand years.
The bio-based fluid, however, is much less toxic.
I mean, you could take the contents of an Nyoka glow stick,
like this one,
and just dump it afterwards, or even drink it if you really
wanted to.
And the plastic around it is biodegradable too.
It's also even possible to use this method...
Thank you.
To create re-usable glow sticks, since you can just
flush the glow solution down the drain
and fill it again to recharge it.
Now, admittedly,
these glow sticks aren't cost-effective at the moment.
But, this technology has the potential to scale really well.
And glow sticks are just one example of the type of reaction
that can be made more sustainable using biotechnology.
Everything from clothing, to pharmaceuticals, to literal
burgers can be made in this fashion.
Ha ha.
I made you guys watch a science lecture.
Disguise does a computer video.
Gotcha.
And now it's over, for this message from our sponsor,
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If you guys enjoyed this video and you like our more
science-y oriented content,
maybe check out our fusion reactor video.
They probably actually made a fair bit of progress since we
made that, but it's still really cool.