Bioluminescence Community Project Night

Come join our ongoing Bioluminescence community project!

Many organisms create their own light, including fireflies, algae, and jellyfish. At the moment, people in the Bioluminescence group are working along three different angles. We're culturing and doing experiments on dinoflagellates, a single-celled algae that can cause bioluminescent waves in the ocean. Others are using synthetic biology to reengineer E. coli with the bioluminescence pathways from another bacteria. And we are trying to insert these genes into Arabidopsis as well, to build a glow-in-the-dark plant.

It's not all hardcore biology though - we're also designing some art pieces with bioluminescence, we're teaching kids how to grow glowing algae with plant fertilizers, and we've built a highly sensitive Arduino controlled light meter to measure bioluminescence. The possibilities are endless - it all depends where you want to take it!

Our community projects are open to anyone, and are driven entirely by whoever wants to show up and participate. This is a great opportunity to come check out BioCurious, and jump into some of the projects going on.

This project has a strong cutting-edge biology bent: genomics, molecular biology, synthetic biology, maybe even some sequencing and metabolic engineering. But don't let that scare you away - you can jump in at any point and we're happy to help you get you feet wet! Everyone here has something to learn, or something to teach.

We'll try to give a brief intro to the project at the start of the meeting for any new visitors. Younger children must be accompanied by an adult, thanks.