October 30, 2016 at 12:07AM

Today I Learned: 1) There are human cell lines that aren't adhesive! Some kind of immune cell lines can be grown free-floating in media. 2) Glucose meters work by measuring the activity of glucose oxidase (GOx) or, more rarely, glucose dehydrogenase (GDH), which both metabolize glucose into other sugars. Both reactions are redox reactions, and the resulting change in oxidation state can be measured with a properly-built sensor. The more glucose, the more GOx reactions per second, the higher the amperage through the sensor. I also learned that you can make a similar device to detect ethanol using AOx (alcohol oxidase) instead of GOx. An iGEM high school team from China built such a device, which could detect alcohol levels in water with reasonable accuracy. They didn't test it in blood. 3) You can swap the active sites of different proteases, and it will work (at least sometimes).