Interesting, all of the compounds used to make this gel are pretty easy to get and the recipe to make the gel is simple. It would be very easy, for someone, to purchase the ingredients and run the experiment on themselves. All of these chemicals are pretty safe and as such the risks are pretty low.
I've never thought about doing citizen science before, but I'm strongly considering it here.
Two different hydrogels, blank-SA and 2dDR-SA, were prepared by simple manual mixing of the constituents in autoclaved sterilized water at RT by using a spatula.
The 2dDR-SA hydrogel was composed of 1.4 g sodium alginate (6.416% w/w), 250 mg propylene glycol (1.146% w/w), 82.5 mg of 2-phenoxyethanol (0.375% w/w), and 86.62 mg of 2-deoxy-D-ribose sugar (0.394% w/w) in 20 mL water. The prepared hydrogels (blank-SA and 2dDR-SA) were stored in glass vials at RT.
For FTIR and 2dDR release studies, 10 mL each of blank-SA and 2dDR-SA hydrogels were poured into Petri dishes (100 × 15 mm) and covered with a perforated aluminum foil. These were frozen at −20°C for 20 h and then placed in Labconco’s FreeZone (4.5 L) at −105°C for 24 h. These freeze-dried hydrogels (FD-blank-SA and FD-2dDR-SA) were stored at RT until used for analyses.
I've never thought about doing citizen science before, but I'm strongly considering it here.