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We probably need to stop calling our event on Thursday Kombucha-Palooza, but we really want to celebrate this drink. It might be hipster swill, but there are a lot of reasons it represents a really cool biotechnology. Beyond the fact that brewing kombucha is a historically relevant system of fermentation, the SCOBY, symbiotic community of…

ChiTownBio is excited to be attending and speaking at the monthly brunch organized by Podcast Brunch Club’s Chicago Chapter. This month they’re discussing the Citizen Science podcast listening list. You can find the list here: https://podcastbrunchclub.com/citizen-science/ Listen to as much as you can, but don’t worry if you can’t listen to all of it. We’re excited to…

We’ve talked about fermented foods, but we’d love to dive deep into the biology of kombucha, everyone’s favorite fermented fad. What is the drink? How can you start growing it at home? What is a SCOBY? What makes up the SCOBY? Can we examine the organisms there on a petri dish? What can we make…

Happy 2019, everyone! We have been busy bees here at ChiTownBio (Altough not the genetically modified ones), and we’ve had quite the year. We’ve grown some mushroom sculptures with some supplies from our friends at Ecovative,  enjoyed some fermented food (Ginger beer recipes for the win!), done some art with slime molds, played with some…

It’s been a while since we’ve sent out an update, but we wanted to inform you about some exciting events coming in the next few weeks at ChiTownBio. This week, please get excited about our upcoming event on biochemistry at the Empirical Taproom this Thursday (September 25th)! We’re going to be playing with some easily…

Hi ChiTownBiologists! Summer is well underway and we’re exploring the hottest gene editing tool in the field–CRISPR–in Jennifer Doudna and Sam Sternberg’s book, A Crack in Creation. We’ll delve deep into the history of CRISPR and speculate on its future. This is a book and discussion you won’t want to miss! When: August 4th, 12-2 p.m. Where:…

  Join us  at Uptown Public Library on February 22nd at 6:00 p.m. for the first ever ChiTownBio biotechnology book club! Our goal for the book club is to read fiction and nonfiction relating to biotechnology, have scintillating discussion centered on themes in the book, and provide expertise to clarify or answer any questions that…

ChiTownBiologists! Our first meeting of the year is tomorrow, and we couldn’t be more excited. Our theme for this even is “biomaterials,” and we’ll have bags of mycelium growing in various agricultural waste materials thanks to our friends at Ecovative’s GrowBio project. Given the right conditions, mycelium (the root-like structures of fungus) can decompose materials like…

A huge thanks to everyone who came out to our end-of-year meeting last night!  Thanks to Isaac we had a number of Foldscopes for ChiTown Biologists to peer into the microcosmos. For those who are unfamiliar, Foldscopes are a “paper origami” microscope that costs less than a dollar and offer magnification on par with the more…

Paul Dailing, author of the 1,001 Chicago Afternoons blog, has featured ChiTown Bio in his latest blog post! Paul and his wife have been regular attendees at our meetings and the petri art they created last night, described in the blog post, are pictured below! Check out the blog post, “Entry #860: A Virus with My Initials.”