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
Upcoming events
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Friday Night Science in the lab - Project Brainstorming Jam Session
3108 Patrick Henry Dr, Santa Clara, CA, USHang out in the lab, with Friday Night Science! Check out what our current researchers are working on, meet other sci-curious folks, and maybe jump into doing some experiments yourself.
This week, we're holding a Project Brainstorming Jam Session at 7pm. You can pitch wild ideas💡 or polished proposals📝 for a bio project and get super helpful ideas, advice, and potentially reagents🦠/gear🔬/help from your fellow (future) researchers. But that's not all, the lab's open from at least 5pm to 9pm, we can give you a tour and we will likely have some ongoing labwork you could try your hand at. For example, the Real Vegan Cheese project* is rumored to be doing some genotyping PCRs 🧬🥵🥶 and taking a timepoint from their latest cheese 🧀 protein fermentation 🍶🦠 that evening... Feel free to come late, leave early, or stay for the whole night.
For the Project Brainstorming Jam Session, this week we'll prioritize time for students planning science fair projects but we should have enough time for others to pitch their projects. If you want to talk about your project, you don't need to prepare anything, it's totally fine to just say what you're thinking about doing. You can draw diagrams on the whiteboard, and we also have a projector if you want to present figures. Please limit any background presentation to a few minutes, then we'll have discussion, and there's plenty of time after the group discussion to follow up with anyone. Great chance to network with future collaborators!
BioCurious should be accessible to all. We have bathrooms inside as well as a kitchen if you need it. Parking is free. We are at 3108 Patrick Henry Drive in Santa Clara CA, we've got a sign at the road and our logo painted on the front of our office space. When you arrive, just walk on in the door and through the front lobby, and take any open desk/chair in that front classroom/office area.
*The Real Vegan Cheese project website is out of date, we're too busy in the lab to update it - help? 😁
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Friday Night Science is a casual friendly event hosted by BioCurious, and is open to experienced bio-engineers as well total newbies who just want to learn more about biology and community labs. BioCurious is an all-volunteer nonprofit that's been running a shared BSL1 community labspace for about 15 years. We are home to a variety of independent researchers, startups, established small businesses, students, and enthusiasts, and we're eager to support each other's investigations. Past and present community projects have included the CRISPR class, Real Vegan Cheese, the Cuttlefish project, Bioprinting, and many others.8 attendees
Real Vegan Cheese - in person lab work
3108 Patrick Henry Dr, Santa Clara, CA, USThe Real Vegan Cheese project is back at the bench. Join us on alternating Mondays at 7pm (check meetup.com/biocurious/events/) for in-person in-lab workshops at BioCurious. You do not need any prior experience or knowledge to join. This event is in the laboratory space, and properly safe attire is required (closed-toed shoes, long pants, long hair tied back).
We are making specific proteins that are necessary for the formation of cheese. Work will likely involve things like yeast strain handling, transformation, culturing, plasmid cloning, PCR, electrophoresis, protein expression, and SDS-PAGE gels. Eventually, we hope to get closer to scaling up production in bioreactors.
The Real Vegan Cheese (https://realvegancheese.org/) project is an award-winning collaboration between BioCurious and our sister lab Counter Culture Labs (http://counterculturelabs.org/) in Oakland, to make real cheese without using any animals!
This grassroots, non-profit research project explores the technology of cellular agriculture by adding the genes for cheese proteins into yeast and other microflora. This turns the yeast into little protein factories, and we aim to use these as a basis to make real cheese by adding plant-based fats and sugars. We call the project "real" vegan cheese because this is not a cheese substitute -- the proteins are the same and so we aim to use the same cheesemaking techniques as you would with cow or goat milk. Additionally, we can explore making cheese from proteins from other mammals that are difficult to 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.
8 attendees
Past events
2846
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