Counter Culture Labs

Informal online meeting about ongoing work to develop open source insulin production hardware - mainly a bioreactor and purification system.

Developing the first open source protocol to produce insulin simply and economically in addition to open source insulin production hardware. Our work may serve as a basis for generic production of this life-saving drug and provide a firmer foundation for continued research into improved versions of insulin.

Help make affordable insulin available to millions worldwide. Go to the Open Insulin website at https://openinsulin.org/donate/ and make a donation to our life saving humanitarian effort. Join us every Sunday on Jitsi video conferencing.

The 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 not a cheese substitute! It all starts with regular old baker's yeast. Through synthetic biology, we engineer our yeast to become milk-protein factories. Our milk proteins are then combined with water and vegan oil to make Vegan Milk which is ultimately converted into Real Vegan Cheese through standard cheese-making processes - just like cheese made from cow or goat milk!

We alternate Admin and Science meetups every other week. This week will be an Admin meeting, so expect to talk about website design, business plans, improving our outreach efforts on social media, and more. Want more science instead? Come join us next week!

Please sign in on Meetup to see the Zoom connection info.

Welcome to our new community project: Kombucha Genomics! For all you fermented foods lovers out there, this is the project for you. Over the course of the next couple months, we'll go through all the steps to isolate and identify a variety of bacterial and yeast strains from kombucha or other fermented foods (bring your own), starting with the basic culturing and progressing all the way through DNA barcoding, genome and microbiome sequencing, systems biology, synthetic biology, and more!

Kombucha (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombucha) is a fermented tea with a very complex symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeasts (SCOBY) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCOBY), composed of dozens of different species. It's a health food; it's a tasty fizzy caffeinated beverage; it even makes vegan leather (http://www.ecouterre.com/u-k-designer-grows-an-entire-wardrobe-from-tea-fermenting-bacteria/) - what's not to like!

Please sign up for this free event on Meetup to see the Zoom connection info.

Come join us to help build YOUR lab. CCL is a 100% unpaid-volunteer-after-hours-run labor of love. There is no "staff" - just a bunch of people figuring out together what needs to get done. Help pitch in to build something amazing together!

We are still meeting online while we wait for the winter Covid peak to subside a bit more. Please RSVP on Meetup to see the Zoom connection info.

This is a weekly zoom call hosted by the Counter Culture Labs and BioCurious communities, for anyone interested in reviewing the week's science and news on COVID-19. Plus guest stars monkeypox, Ebola, RSV and influenza. We welcome your questions and are happy to discuss any articles or news you may have found.

Please sign up for this free event on Meetup to see the Zoom connection info.

Developing the first open source protocol to produce insulin simply and economically in addition to open source insulin production hardware. Our work may serve as a basis for generic production of this life-saving drug and provide a firmer foundation for continued research into improved versions of insulin.

Help make affordable insulin available to millions worldwide. Go to the Open Insulin website at https://openinsulin.org/donate/ and make a donation to our life saving humanitarian effort. Join us every Sunday on Jitsi video conferencing.

Miss out on one of the mycology workshops and want to catch up? Do you have some experience with mycology but want to take it to the next level? Have a project that you would like to work on but don't have the capacity to do it at home?

Bay Area Applied Mycology and Counter Culture Labs are offering a unique opportunity for you to hone your skills and learn some new ones along the way.

Join us for one of our free open labs!

Counter Culture Labs (CCL) has some really great equipment and supplies that can help you bring your projects to fruition. Work on your transfers in a biosafety cabinet, practice your microscopy techniques, troubleshoot your PCR and get good bands on your gel. Some limited pre-made supplies like agar and grain will be available for purchase.

RSVP here on meetup and make sure to fill out the registration form (link when you register) can get a better idea of what everyone is looking to do and their timing.

As this event is new, attendance will be extremely limited while we get things figured out. If you register but then realize you can't make it, please cancel or reach out to me so that someone else can take your place. No-call-no-shows will not be tolerated.

Participants will be able to use lab-grade equipment with some instruction and supervision and must demonstrate proper lab safety and equipment handling at all times. There are many folks who call this lab home and conduct their extremely important work here. Beginners are welcome, but I strongly recommend attending one or more workshops/meetings at CCL before attending an open lab session to familiarize yourself with the lab and equipment.

The 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 not a cheese substitute! It all starts with regular old baker's yeast. Through synthetic biology, we engineer our yeast to become milk-protein factories. Our milk proteins are then combined with water and vegan oil to make Vegan Milk which is ultimately converted into Real Vegan Cheese through standard cheese-making processes - just like cheese made from cow or goat milk!

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.

continuing our coordination of our efforts to analyze water quality through plating and PCR methods, talking about our possible future events and expanding our efforts, and the subcommittees on grant writing and outreach. main topic this week will be the continuation of collaboration effort establishment (including an update from recent GCBS NARD meeting) and discussing the grant worksheet. This is always a group-led project first, so please come ready to share ideas and contribute! Considering the current state of the Omnicommons, our community, and the various diseases floating through the air, we will be online only for this meeting. online link: https://meet.jit.si/DifficultFinishesHandleLeast