Statement of the Problem

Background:

All types of systems contain some form of feedback control. Biological systems being no different, often contain these control systems, except not with circuits, but enzymes. The study of these processes can be quite expensive, as the monitoring method is monitoring small emissions of light from a genetically modified mouse. The test equipment on the market tends to be expensive, and in addition, does not allow certain functions.

The Design:

We intend to build a piece of test equipment that not only is over $30,000 cheaper than the commercial application, we intend to put in function that is missing from the commercial product. The overall purpose of this device will be to measure light output from a sample; it will use a detector to feed the data to a computer which will tabulate. The missing function is the ability to modify the experiment during the process without disturbing the samples by the introduction of outside light. The result is that we are going to build a device that has piping into it for experiment modification, as well as to collect light samples from each sample at least once every 10 minutes.