
What we’re about
We believe that innovations in biology should be
accessible, affordable, and open to everyone.
We’re building a community biology lab for
amateurs, inventors, entrepreneurs,
and anyone who wants to
experiment with friends.
Welcome to BioCurious
Visit the BioCurious homepage
BioCurious Community Lab
Opened in Sunnyvale, CA; Fall 2011! and in 2017 we moved to Santa Clara.
Join the discussion at Google Groups
http://groups.google.com/group/biocurious
Our successful Kickstarter campaign (http://biocurious.org/kickstarter) brought together volunteers and other biology enthusiasts eager to create a community lab, and they helped us raise over $35,000.
We are a 6700 sq. ft. facility in the heart of Silicon Valley. Come join us and see the next big thing to start in a Silicon Valley garage.
BioCurious is…
a complete working laboratory and technical library
for entrepreneurs to cheaply access
equipment, materials, and co-working space
a training center for biotechniques, with an emphasis on safety
a meeting place for citizen scientists, hobbyists,
activists, and students
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Science is all around us. Many find a love for it at an early age, but few continue to learn after leaving educational institutions. For those who continue to seek to know, there is BioCurious. Curious about biology? Come to a meetup to find other like-minded folk!
BioCurious is a completely volunteer run non-profit organization. We serve the community by providing lab space and classes to members and the community.
There are plenty of ways to get involved:
become a member
teach a class
take a class
donate your time, money
change the world
Featured event

Wet-Lab Plant Genetic Engineering Workshop 🧬 (Take-home Kit included!)
Welcome to the Plant Genetic Engineering Workshop! Join us at BioCurious (3108 Patrick Henry Dr, Santa Clara, CA 95054) for a hands-on experience in inserting genes into plants! This is an introductory workshop - attendees of all backgrounds are welcome, non-bio folks especially.
Learn about fundamental DNA tools, understand how agrobacterium is used as a vehicle for delivering genes into plants, gain wet-lab experience with sterile microbial culture, and insert a gene encoding for production of beetroot pigment into tobacco, all in one day. Participants will also take home a plant genetic engineering kit! After successful transformation, plant leaves will turn red in a matter of days.
Kit components (provided by the instructor):
- Nicotiana tabacum plant with pot and soil
- Agrobacterium with RUBY Plasmid
- Petri dish with LB agar
- Inoculation loops
- Infiltration buffer
- Blunt syringes
- Pipettes
- Nitrile gloves
- Bleach
The workshop fee is $250. Venmo @ccl-plantbio. Last four digits phone # confirmation: 6986. Message the organizer on Meetup if you need an alternate payment method. This covers instruction, the materials and equipment used in the class, and the take-home genetic engineering kit.
Required lab attire for safety: Long pants and closed-toed shoes.
Unable to attend? Interested in other classes like plant tissue culture and bioluminescent algae? Join our mailing list to hear about upcoming Bay Area workshops!
About the Instructor
Anthony Neil Tan is a UC Berkeley trained bioengineer whose projects center on enhancing high-value plants through genetic engineering. His past work ranges from designing a plant growth chamber that won a national NASA contest to developing new plant genetic engineering tools at the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint BioEnergy Institute.
All ticket sales are final. No refunds can be issued.
Upcoming events
129
•OnlineSynthetic Bio, Biohacking and Cheese - Real Vegan Cheese Online Science Meeting
OnlineThe Real Vegan Cheese (https://realvegancheese.org/) project is an award-winning collaboration between Counter Culture Labs and our sister lab BioCurious (http://www.biocurious.org/) in Sunnyvale, to make real cheese without using any animals!
Real Vegan Cheese is a grassroots, non-profit research project working to produce real cheese using cellular agriculture. We add the genes for cheese proteins to yeast and other microflora, and turn them into little protein factories, then make real cheese by adding plant-based fats and sugars. Real Vegan Cheese is not a cheese substitute -- the cheesemaking process is just like using cow or goat milk! We are dedicated to Open Science and making sure the results of our research are available to the global community to enable a sustainable animal-free dairy industry.
We alternate Admin and Science meetups every other week. This week will be a Science meeting, so expect to talk about cheese proteins, how Lactobacilli create that cheesy flavor, physicochemical properties of different mammalian milks, evolutionary genomics of the casein gene cluster in Narwhal, and the imaginary phylogeny of unicorns! Want to join our Admin meetings as well? Come join us next week...
Please sign in on Meetup to see the Zoom connection info.5 attendees
Past events
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