Projects

Real Vegan Cheese

What: The project is using yeast to make casein, the protein that gives cheese its characteristic texture and flavor.
Why: The dairy industry puts a strain on the environment and we are good at fermenting yeast to make byproducts.
Where: Joint project between Counter Culture Labs and Biocurious.
Contact: Marc J.

BioBloc Sunscreen

What: This project is using coral genes to make sunscreen without chemicals.
Why: Three active ingredients in sunscreen are known to kill coral. Coral make their own UV protective pigments.By cloning those genes we can protect ourselves and the coral.
Where: Counter Culture Labs
Contact: Patrik D.

Open Insulin Project

What: The project is using E. coli to make insulin with new DNA logic.
Why: The current methods for making insulin are under patent. The goal of this project is engineer an open source design that anyone can make.
Where: Counter Culture Labs
Contact: Anthony D.

Truffle Hacking

What: This project isolates bacteria from truffles, harvests them, studies them and modifies them, in order to produce the truffle aromatic compounds more easily.
Why: The microbes living in symbiosis within the truffle mushroom are responsible for synthesising the delicate truffle aromatic compounds - it would be so cool to get the natural truffle aromas directly from the microbes, bypassing the painful step of growing truffle fungi!! Where: Boslab
Contact: Raphael Laurenceau

Age Tune-up

What: This project is to develop a method to synthesize and collect large quantities of the NAD precursor, nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN), by overexpression that gene pathway in the bacterium Lactobacillus acidophilus.
Why: NMN has been suggested to slow down or reverse the aging process, but do to the high cost of this agent, researchers are limited. We plan to change that.
Where: Boslab
Contact: Jennifer Clifford

mRNA Assay Hardware