Makespace Labs are now open!
COVID restrictions were finally lifted from the Makespace Labs last month, so we can restart community projects and workshops!
Please sign-up if you are interested in joining any of the activities below, and pass on to anyone else in the Cambridge Area who may be!
Show your interest here: https://tinyurl.com/ms-labs-2022
Beginners Workshops
Hands on educational workshops to learn the principles of modern biology lab techniques for participants who do not necessarily have prior knowledge or lab expertise.
Are you a bitter super-taster?
Using DNA from your own cheek cells, find out if you are someone that can taste the bitter compound PTC – all due to a single DNA mutation in a single taste receptor. The workshop uses a range of molecular biology techniques (DNA extraction, PCR DNA amplification, restriction digest and gel electrophoresis)
Grow your own microbe art!
Make bacteria expressing brightly coloured proteins to grow your own microbe art. Bonus session: send instructions to the BioArtBot in Paris – a robot artist that will make a pixel picture for you and send you photos as it grows.
Hands-on gene editing!
Use the revolutionary CRISPR “molecular scissors” to edit DNA and turn a green-glowing yeast into a blue-glowing yeast, then check your final DNA sequence using the Oxford Nanopore MinIon – even more cutting edge technology which reads DNA using an over-sized USB stick!
Community Projects
Undertake projects together working with biology and crossover collaborations with other types of maker through electronics, data science, 3D printing and other technologies.
Plug and play synthetic biology!
Working on electronic and biological circuit design by building simple electronic circuits then seeing how to recreate the same circuit using DNA.
Sourdough!
Explore sequencing starter cultures and determine which yeast and bacteria species are present in your SCOBY (Symbiotic Community Of Bacteria and Yeast). There is scope for a lot of experiments: what happens if a starter culture moves to a different country: does it change over time or stay the same? How much does the culture change over time in the same environment? Are particular microbes associated with particular flavours? For lovers of bread and biology.
Open Source Bioreactor!
Looking at building open source, bench top, bioreactors to grow bacteria that make important proteins such as enzymes for PCR, pigments and other useful products. Opportunity to collaborate with others in the US, India, Cameroon, Ghana and beyond. Looking for people interested in mechanical and electronic engineering, industrial design, sensors, biology, technical writing, video production and more.
Eden Project Project!
A new project in collaboration with the Eden project – more details soon!
Meet-ups
Biology Club!
Monthly talk, demo, guided build session or other format to meet others and explore biology and engineering. Past topics have included an intro to cultured meat, microscope scrapheap challenge, genomics and more.
Biomaker Meetup!
An informal monthly co-making Meetup where you can join a community project, use the Biomaker training kits to learn some no-code electronics and programming, work on your own projects and help out others.
Make the Labs!
For anyone interested in being part of a team looking to improve or reimagine the Makespace Lab facilities!
Please share your interest to get involved: https://tinyurl.com/ms-labs-2022 and pass it on to anyone in the Cambridge area who might be interested too!
