Counter Culture Labs

In the age of COVID, we have seen how fragile our health systems are, who bears the heaviest burden of the crisis, and how people are coming together to help each other through mutual aid. We will be discussing parallel topics that are all too relevant for those whose lives are dependent on insulin and what the Open Insulin Project is up against to help facilitate its access. Our panelists will be bringing unique perspectives from public health and community biology. The pane...l and discussion will be recorded and posted on youtube. Join this dynamic conversation with Maria Chavez, executive director at BioCurious, Anthony Di-franco, cofounder of the Open Insulin Project, Ramy Kim, public health practitioner & President of Counter Culture Labs, and Jose Liquet, microbiologist. After a short introduction, the panelists will ask each other questions about health inequalities and how this relate to the Open Insulin Project. After 30 min discussion, we will take questions from the public. You can ask your question directly on the chat or before on social media. https://www.meetup.com/Counter-Culture-La/events/270785213/

This Thursday 6PM PT, we're having an online info session on how to participate in environmental sampling for COVID-19 with us as part of the the MetaSUB consortium mapping urban microbiomes. Come to learn more about this international effort! More info https://www.meetup.com/Counter-Culture-La/events/270702100/

Hard-core evolutionary genomics research, cheesy PR stunt, or recreational crypto-phylo-mythozoology - pick your own adventure! Join us Saturday at 4pm PST on zoom. Signup on Meetup to attend. The Real Vegan Cheese project at Counter Culture Labs and BioCurious has half-jokingly claimed we can make cheese from any mammal with a sequenced genome - even something as weird as Narwhal. Well, the Narwhal genome just got published. Time to get serious! In this one-of-a-kind worksh...op, Patrik will dig into the casein genes that produce the cheese proteins in milk, look at the casein gene cluster in the genome, examine the evolution of narwhals and other whales from other mammals (did you know the closest land mammal to whales is the hippo?), and more. If you want to contribute to some serious science - there are at least one or two publishable scientific papers that we can work on, about the evolution of the casein gene cluster in whales. Or if you want to jump on board with our Real Vegan Cheese project, we can go over how to take the Narwhal casein genes and express them in yeast or E. coli for recombinant protein production. And if you really want to know what unicorn cheese would taste like - we can get into Ancestral Sequence Reconstruction from narwhal, horses, and... rhinos? https://www.meetup.com/Counter-Culture-La/events/270319806/

Hi from CCL! We’ll be posting soon w what we’ve been up to during the pandemic (a lot!) which goes to show that collaborative #DIYBio & #communityscience thrives in virtual spaces as well as in the lab. We also want to share some local #mutualaid work we’ve been supporting in Oakland to help one of the most vulnerable populations people without shelter during our shelter-in-place. The community orgs & individual that have come together and the donation of goods & resources h...ave helped make the last distribution possible, and a couple more planned. Want to help? Please get in touch! #healthforall REPOST @goodgoodeatz You know what's so so Oakland? Our collaborative spirit. You've seen it happening all around us, even before all of this but ESPECIALLY when it's needed most. On Easter Sunday, we teamed up with @camanhdeli @counterculturelabs @northoaklandrestorativejustice @phatbeetsoakland @criticalresistance for a food and care kits drive to be delivered to the North Oakland Encampments. From fresh made banh mi to fresh produce to every day items and supplies, trucks and cars were loaded up by volunteers and dished out. Big shout out to all involved in making this special delivery happen for the folks in these encampments. There are countless ways to donate right now whether it's your time, money, or skill. Hit us up in DM if you want to support anything you see here! We can't say enough about how every little bit helps in big ways. Let's keep doing what we do! #selfhelphungerprogram #allhandsondeck #ittakesavillage #collectivespirit #collaborate #conspire2inspire #foodislove #oaklandeats #oaklandfoodies #oaklandthrives #fooddrive #communityspirit #letsrally @ Omni Commons

Lab skills 101 class today led by Patrik every first Saturday 10:30-12 at the lab. He’s wowing the group with the drama of opening a -80 freezer ‘Don’t lick the inside of the negative eighty’ we’re learning all the ways to do things safely and to keep all our appendages! #communitybio #communityscience #citsci #scicomm #openscience

Not even Monday and we can't wait for Thursday night at CCL! Join us with Hartford-based interdisciplinary artist & educator Carol Padberg (https://www.carolpadberg.com/). Carol will be doing an informal presentation on weaving collaboratively with living mycelia and the impact working with this lifeform has had on her art practice. She will also introduce the MFA program she has founded which is based on regenerative culture, the Nomad MFA (https://www.nomadmfa.org/). RS...VP (& updates) on Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/Counter-Culture-La/events/266377945/ #DIYBio #communityscience #Oakland #scienceoutreach #sciart #bioart #mycology

Rare annual sighting of Ramy working under the hood, under the cloak of night. She’s prepping slime mold plates for the opening of Biotechnology Learning Lab at @berkeleyscience this Sat 11-3p Nov 9. Come thru and say hi during this very kid-friendly event! #communitybio #communityscience #diybio #biotech #slimemold #physarum #physarumpolycephalum

So much action last night at CCL we didn’t have a chance to capture it all. We had special guests at our mushroom event, another group working fixing a hood for future cell culture experiments, (got it to run, yay!) and not pictured: Robotics for Biohacking group working on our @opentrons_ & @openinsulin folks in the wetlab. Join us to stay on top of all our meetupsall open to the public: https://www.meetup.com/Counter-Culture-Labs/ ... #communityscience #citsci #mycology #doittogether #diybio @ Counter Culture Labs

One of our favorite events of the year is coming up this Sunday! Get geeky with us at the East Bay Mini Maker Faire in North #Oakland. Bring friends, neighbors, n strangers. Swing by our table & say HI! We'll have hands-on DNA visualization, #kombucha petting zoo, ghost heart , + more

CCL goes to Brooklyn! Thanks Genspace for letting Ramy hang with you and learning how other #communitybio spaces do their thing. It was great to participate in your New Volunteer orientation & meet the new recruits artists, scientists, community builders. We get to learn so much from each other! #citizenscience #diybio #sunsetpark

Best plans for Saturday morning? Come meet #Wolbachia, "the male-killing, gender-bending, gonad-eating bacteria" 10a-12p tmrw at CCL! learn to extract insect DNA in search of Wolbachia RSVP Meetup: bit.ly/2kxG248 $20 NOTAFLOF... Learn more abt Wolbachia bit.ly/2m5yMfY Quote attribution to John Timmer

Had a great CCL quarterly members’ meeting last night. Didn’t get a pic of the potluck spread including Mei’s braised pork belly(!) bc we were too busy being cute saying hello to Grace at her first mtg & goodbye to our intern Tom