Hi Joel,
Sorry for the late reply. Thanks, it is in part reverse and forward engineering, but our hope, in the end, is that we made it accessible to everyone who would like to do cheap and efficient nucleic acid extractions using magnetic beads.
Regarding your question, there are quite a few possibilities to conjugate additional molecules to the beads, dependent if you would like to use the carboxyl- or silica-beads. We are in transition now to a new lab, but we will continue developing new protocols for other purposes, like protein purification, or conjugating antibodies to the beads. I will keep you posted once we have something “usable”.
Cheers,
T.