BOSSLAB

Belle Isle Marsh May 27, 2012

Mon, 28 May 2012 00:03:48 -0400

Some folks headed over to belle isle marsh today in search of sea slugs. I went by later in search of the same slugs…no luck! But I did see a lot of crabs, both of the pincher-y and hermit crab varieties, horseshoe crab molts, one huge adult horseshoe crab, giant bristleworms, and some jellyfish.

Photos

Jelly. Jelly, fish. Jellyfish.

Horseshoe crab

Bristle worm booking it

Bristle worm worming around

Gel from the last saturday class of BIOTECH 101. I need to find...

Sun, 27 May 2012 21:14:03 -0400

Gel from the last saturday class of BIOTECH 101. I need to find a better way to photograph these- in real live the bands are very purple-blue and the gel is transparent. Some people did better at loading than others. The lanes are labeled 1-8 from left to right. You can see in lane 6 that when the tip was jabbed into the gel, the DNA was loaded mostly to one side. Lane 4 had the best delivery, and even in this picture you can see the supercoiled plasmid DNA that runs as a smaller fragment than the nicked or linearized pDNA above it.

Biotech 101 class today- the last session of this class.

Sat, 26 May 2012 17:16:39 -0400

Biotech 101 class today- the last session of this class.

Adding gel stain to a 1x TBE buffer

Sat, 26 May 2012 17:15:39 -0400

Adding gel stain to a 1x TBE buffer

Test gel #many. Stained with Carolina Blu. The bands in the...

Sat, 26 May 2012 17:13:00 -0400

Test gel #many. Stained with Carolina Blu. The bands in the upper left (the pale purple-blue bands in the first two lanes) are pGREEN plasmid extracted at BOSSLAB!

BIOTECH 101 Class Wrap Up - Coming soon, BIOCAMP 101

Sat, 26 May 2012 17:11:03 -0400

Today we wrapped up the Saturday biotech 101 class. For four weeks, five people got together on Saturday and learned some biotech basics- aseptic technique, transformation, high-quality plasmid extraction, and gel electrophoresis. However, I learned from this class that people tend to get busy and want to do things on Saturday (what a concept!), so the next iteration of the class is called BIOCAMP 101- same material, same hands on activity, but over the course of one weekend in June (check the classes page!) instead of spread out over the month.

BOSSLAB Gets an AUTOclave

Sat, 26 May 2012 17:02:56 -0400

Unfortunately, it was shipped to us broken, and since it was done on ebay, there are now ebay shenannigains going on. Grr. The part that is currently leaking is the condenser tank. It looks like this:

It may be possible to repair or replace the tank, I just hope there is nothing else that is wrong with it! It would be pretty awesome to have a real automatic autoclave instead of a pressure sterilizer and a turkey burner. The sterilizer and burner will still have things this autoclave doesn’t- like the ability to do 1 L bottles, but it will be a lot more convenient to autoclave things.

Coming soon: New Classes and Sea Slugs!

Thu, 24 May 2012 01:26:00 -0400

Check out the new classes posted on the bosslab website! Just click the classes tab up at the top of the page!

Also, the photosynthetic sea slug group is going out to belle isle marsh this SUNDAY to go and find some slugs! Give me a holler (see contact page) or check the diybio-boston mailing list for more details.

Aww yea! Jen came by and helped make buttons!

Fri, 18 May 2012 09:36:30 -0400

Aww yea! Jen came by and helped make buttons!

Preparing CarolinaBlu stain in 1% agarose 1x TBE gel.

Fri, 18 May 2012 09:35:11 -0400

Preparing CarolinaBlu stain in 1% agarose 1x TBE gel.

pVIB transformants from BIOTECH 101. 30 second exposure, iso...

Mon, 14 May 2012 15:44:14 -0400

pVIB transformants from BIOTECH 101. 30 second exposure, iso 100, minimum aperture (aperture as big as it can be) with a brief flash of light at the beginning. This develops the scene around the plate, and then the rest of the blue glowing color develops from the long exposure.

pVIB transformants from BIOTECH 101 in the dark, long exposure...

Mon, 14 May 2012 15:43:17 -0400

pVIB transformants from BIOTECH 101 in the dark, long exposure photo

pVIB transformants from the Saturday BIOTECH 101 class

Mon, 14 May 2012 15:41:54 -0400

pVIB transformants from the Saturday BIOTECH 101 class

pGREEN (GFP) plasmid transformants. No photo with blue light...

Mon, 14 May 2012 15:40:29 -0400

pGREEN (GFP) plasmid transformants. No photo with blue light because the camera picks up the blue light much better than the green light, so the picture comes out all blue. Taken with a white LED light source in the bottom of a brown box. Note: build better photo equipment.

BIOTECH 101: GFP and Bioluminescence Plasmids

Sat, 12 May 2012 18:55:28 -0400

Another good day at the BOSSLAB- Today we transformed GFP and lux-operon plasmids into e. coli! Here’s to hoping that it worked. No matter how many times the transformation procedure is successful, I still have a fear that it wont work, or there will be contamination, but mostly it just works.

Speaking of how BOSS the BOSSLAB is, here is a picture of some of the awesome organization that some of the people who got to biotech 101 did (that Chris organized- thanks Chris!):

WOW! this is the most clutter-free the bench has been in ages- at least since last time it was cleaned! We also autoclaved a ton of old trash, and I sterilized most of our bottle collection later. WOO!

First Thursday BIOTECH 101 Class, May 10, 2012!

Fri, 11 May 2012 14:14:23 -0400

Finally, I remembered to take pictures of what goes on at BOSSLAB classes! Here is a shot of people at the Thursday BIOTECH 101 class, working on streaking the LB plates they poured. There was a lot of curiosity about molecular techniques and DNA, which will be covered (hopefully) in our next class which has a DNA-mobio focus!

503.05- Huge parts order for BIOTECH 101

Tue, 08 May 2012 19:51:09 -0400

Whew. Just ordered a bunch of supplies for BIOTECH 101- and I am not done yet! It is a good thing we have money to order supplies, or this class would NOT happen!

Avery out!

Awesome Class and Meeting 5/5/2012

Sun, 06 May 2012 17:28:00 -0400

This Saturday, we had an awesome meeting, and then kicked off the first official biotech 101 class offered at BOSSLAB!

Eight people attended the meeting, from engineers to middle school students. We talked about PCR, and had a nice chat about various aspects of biology. Next time I should take better notes during meeting time, and more pictures of the class! But it is hard to remember to take pictures with so much going on and so much to explain.

In the class we covered how to sterilize media, take appropriate safety precautions, some aspects of aseptic technique, how to pipette and how to streak plates. All six of us will be meeting next week for transformations, so stay tuned!

Later, I met with CellFyre (@CellFyre for you twitter people), and we talked about her ambitions to start up a DIYBIO group in Oregon. She seem motivated, and has a lot of experience! I can’t wait to see what she does.

Goals for BOSSLAB this Summer

Wed, 02 May 2012 22:11:29 -0400

This summer I have an opportunity to change BOSSLAB for the better, so I will be working hard at it! The major improvements that I will try to implement are:

-regular meetings, so people can talk about projects

-some structure for using the equipment safely and in a sustainable way, so we don’t run out of supplies or run equipment into the ground

-regular classes so people can get their hands on biology in a structured way

The next meeting is this Saturday, May 5 2012 at 12 noon. Hopefully I will also be starting a biotech 101 class based on the GFP project (click the link and you will see mostly posts about the GFP project). If you want to sign up for that class, check out the classes page.

DIYBIO Summer Projects at BOSSLAB!

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 01:59:00 -0400

Hey folks,

This is my first post on the BOSSLAB site, but I have been organizing DIYBIO Boston events for a while (want to know more about me? click here)! This summer there will be some pretty cool things going on, and I wanted to post them up here so YOU can get involved! Descriptions below, you can sign up here.

Classes:

Well, we are going to start out with one class. Every good bio-hackerspace needs to have an introductory class to how people “hack biology”. This class will cover what you forgot (or never learned) in biology, and provide lab time and safety training. Day one covers “Safety Day”, and introduces aseptic technique. Learn to pipette properly, and use the autoclave to make various kinds of media, and then prepare streak plates of e. coli. Day two will explain the “central dogma” of biology, and we will proceed with transforming e. coli from last time with a plasmid that is to be determined (pGREEN is likely). On day three we will extract plasmid DNA from the bacteria. Day four will be one of two things: either a protein extraction OR running the extracted plasmid in a gel and visualizing it. This will be offered monthly and will cost $200.

Projects:

We will also have a LOT of projects/events:

Ginger beer day:

Come learn to make your own ginger beer! Materials will be somewhere in the $5-10 range.

Kombucha Project:

Learn to grow fermented tea! Find out how a SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast) turns regular tea into a refreshing and fizzy beverage. Materials will be in the $5-10 range.

Yoghut Project:

Come make yoghurt! Still figuring this one out.

Photosynthetic Sea Slugs:

Lets grow some of these! Apparently they are native to the northeast, and there are people who are excited about growing them!

Chitons:

Chitons are armored sea critters that eat algae. Like the slugs, they are local and we can grow them!

Synthetic Biology Project:

For you folks who really want to hack biology and have some experience (or want to hang out with those that do), lets do some synthetic biology! We have the equipment…can you bring the knowledge and dedication?