Events
DIY Tissue Culture
Saturday, December 8, 2018
3:00 pm - 6:00 pm
A Two-part Workshop Saturday & Sunday afternoon December 8th & 9th 3-6PM Henrietta Lacks' cells are immortal. They have been dividing in Petri dishes since the 1940s. How do we keep human cell lines growing endlessly? This workshop will introduce you to tissue culture. Working with a human lung cell line, you will learn what types of media human cells need to grow, how to propagate them and above all how to achieve good sterile technique. As a bonus, you will also use a DIY cell culture setup to isolate live cells from a chicken leg from the supermarket! Instructor Dr. Ellen Jorgensen is president of Biotech Without Borders, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting science literacy and hands-on access to biotechnology. In 2009 she cofounded Genspace, named one of the World's Top 10 Innovative Companies in Education by Fast Company. Her efforts to promote low-cost bio-innovation are featured in Nature, Science, . . . More details
Biomess and Other Recent Works- A Talk by Oron Catts
Sunday, December 2, 2018
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Oron Catts is a mesmerizing speaker, whose focus on the semi-living in his work gives him a unique connection to Biotech without Borders. He's here all the way from Perth, Australia. Don't miss this talk! Biomess, currently on show at the State Art Gallery of Western Australia is a collaboration with the West Australian Museum. The installation includes (mainly) non charismatic specimens from the museum’s collection that defy common ideas about self, gender, identity and individuality as well as liveness, artificiality and technology. In addition to preserved/taxidermised specimens this installation presents living organisms and technologically “designed” and manipulated life forms. It uses luxury retail design tropes to ask what kind of aesthetics should be used when life becomes a commodity or objects of desire. How do we make sense of living forms that were constructed to blur what we consider specimen, scientific tool, product and an art object? Another related . . . More details
How To Run Mycelium: A Fungal Tissue Culture Workshop
Sunday, December 2, 2018
3:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Laboratory Workshop by Craig Trester, founder of MYC.NYC Most people typically encounter mushrooms either for sale at the market or on the menus of their favorite restaurants, without ever having to search for and identify them in their natural habitats. Which leads the question, what techniques made it possible for humans to go beyond foraging in the woods and cultivate Fungi on demand? This workshop will offer the answer through an elementary introduction to the theory and practice of Laboratory Mycology. Working with mushrooms from both the grocery and forest, you'll learn how to formulate agar media, culture fungal tissue samples on petri dishes, and understand the process of mycelial expansion that is essential to perform successful mushroom cultivation. These more 'scientific' methods are used to propagate from cuttings, to isolate rare species, and to set up commercial production for medicinal use mushrooms such as Reishi. It's also the best . . . More details
Hacking DNA with Synthetic Biology
Monday, November 26, 2018
6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
A 12-hour class in 4 evening sessions: November 26-29th - 6-9PM Swhat if building a new life form was as easy as using Lego bricks? Synthetic biology is the science of engineering living organisms as if they were biological machines. This course explores the implications of this emerging technology and allows you to experience it hands-on. DNA is your source code. But can we think of DNA as a collection of circuits and routines that keep us alive? What if we standardize DNA ‘parts’, much like resistors and capacitors are standardized in electronics? In this class you will learn the theory and practice of Synbio, a discipline that is enabling a new wave of biotech startups to thrive and made genetic engineering accessible to everyone. You will learn SBOL, the visual language of synthetic biology, and how to use online registries of DNA parts to design new and useful biological circuits. . . . More details
Can Mushrooms Save the World? A Workshop on Culturing and Using Fungi
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Talk & Workshop by Craig Trester, founder of MYC.NYC Fungi are the keystone species that interconnect every facet of life in our world. This class will highlight the supreme influence these ancient and often overlooked organisms have upon our health, society, and environment and also provide a succinct peek into the Fungal Queendom from the perspectives of ecology, anthropology, pharmacology, and bioremediation. The class also features a workshop component that teaches attendees how to perform low tech and low cost mushroom cultivation techniques that can be replicated at home with upcycled materials. Craig M. Trester is a citizen scientist whose focus lies in the field of mycology, applying biomimicry and permaculture principles to develop regenerative solutions for a future which faces many challenges. By studying Fungi, he believes novel approaches towards alternative agriculture, pharmacology, and bioremediation can be realized. Outside of the lab Craig is the sole proprietor of MYC.NYC, an applied mycology educational . . . More details
CRISPR Genome Editing Workshop
Sunday, November 18, 2018
3:00 pm - 6:00 pm
CRISPR is the new genome editing technology that has disrupted the biotechnology industry. Is it really plug-and-play? Are we gods now? During the workshop you will do hands-on lab work to edit the genome of yeast using CRISPR-Cas9. We'll take a look at the latest CRISPR developments and the ethical questions created by them- from editing human embryos to bringing back the Woolly Mammoth- and the bitter battle over patents and the Nobel Prize. Instructor Dr. Ellen Jorgensen is president of Biotech Without Borders, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting science literacy and hands-on access to biotechnology. In 2009 she cofounded Genspace, named one of the World's Top 10 Innovative Companies in Education by Fast Company. Her efforts to promote low-cost bio-innovation are featured in Nature, Science, Discover, Wired, Make, BBC News, Dan Rather, PBS News, Discovery Channel, and The NY Times. She has a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology, spent many years in the biotechnology industry, and . . . More details
The Science of GMOs – A KnowScience Talk
Thursday, November 8, 2018
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Celebrate Thanksgiving and science with a KnowScience talk by Kate Bredbenner Is your Thanksgiving Turkey a GMO? Are GMOs safe? Getting information on GMOs from the internet can be a scary experience.This talk will explain the what, why and how of GMOs in an unbiased, informative and scientifically accurate way. Kate will examine real-world examples of GMOs and give a scientist's perspective on the upsides and downsides of the technology. Kate Bredbenner is a scientist at the Rockefeller University in the laboratory of Cellular Biophysics where she studies virus DNA engineering using fluorescence microscopy. She is a science communicator and blog editor for Know Science and an avid supporter of science outreach organizations. More details
The Ecstasy of the False Positive
Friday, November 2, 2018
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
A free talk by Richard Pell The Center for PostNatural History is the world’s only museum dedicated to the collection and documentation of living organisms that have been intentionally altered by people, through process such as selected breeding and genetic engineering. The museums Founder and Director, Rich Pell, will speak about the unusual specimens that teeter the edge of natural history. He will revisit some historic examples of specimens that were exposed as hoaxes as well as actual ones that were suspected of being fakes. These specimens serve as powerful metaphor for the false positives that always lurk on the edge of science. Each reminds us of the difference between what we know, and what we would like to be true. Richard Pell is the founder and director of the Center for PostNatural History, an organization dedicated to the collection and exposition of life-forms that have been intentionally and heritably . . . More details
Climate Change Truths: Earth in the Hot Seat – A KnowScience Talk
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
A free talk by Dr. Angel G. Munoz The observed global temperature of our planet is increasing, and this global warming cannot be explained through orbital changes, solar changes, changes in land use, volcano activity, aerosols or other natural causes. It can only be explained via increased concentration of a man-made greenhouse gases. Furthermore, the climate that we observe can be understood as the interaction between the anthropogenic climate change —typically acting as a background signal at centennial scales— and the Earth’s natural climate variability —typically at months-to-decades timescales. Both are important, as natural climate variability can amplify or decrease the impacts of the climate change signal. Hence, it is key that both kind of signals be always considered for decision-making purposes in a wide variety of sectors of interest for society. In this talk we explore these ideas and present tools to help understand those interactions and related uncertainties. . . . More details
Who’s Reading Your Genes?
Monday, October 22, 2018
6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Come on down to BwB's regular Open Night! In addition to our regular program, we are running a special public forum "Who's Reading your Genes? A Public Forum on Genomic Privacy". Pizza, beer, great conversation and lab work. You'll see just how easy it is to access genetic information by extracting DNA from yourself and amplifying it using PCR to test yourself for a CCR5 mutation. More details
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