Cambridge Science Festival

For this year's Cambridge Science Festival, Alex Ting (Cambridge OpenPlant coordinator) teamed up with Biomakespace, SciArt in Cambridge, and independent events producer Sophie Weeks to host The Art & Science Soirée. The event brought together scientists, engineers, artists and designers engaged in DIY science for an exciting evening of speed meets, snap-talks, hands-on demos, and unexpected encounters. 

The event opened with slam poetry by Peter Bickerton (Science Communicator, Earlham Institute) followed by a talk by Jim Ajioka (Co-founder, Colorifix) and Giulia Tomasello (Interaction Designer specialising in women's healthcare.) Inside the house, Biomaker Challenge teams exhibited their low-cost, open-source projects. The aim of the event was to provide inspiration for open science projects (talks and demos), showcase the tools available to pursue such projects (Biomaker Challenge), and highlight a community-access space for biology and prototyping (Biomakespace). We hope that the event will inspire and provide an avenue for artists, designers, and other non-scientists to get involved in open science. 

Photos of the event can be found here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/synbiosri/albums/72157679436063798

Students recieve CRISPR training thanks to OpenPlant-funded project.

Thanks to the support of OpenPlant 4K fund, summer student Nandor Hegyi (University of Aberdeen) and final year undergraduate student Darius Zarrabian (University of Cambridge) received hands-on CRISPR training from Dr Gonzalo Mendoza Ochoa in the lab of Alison Smith (Cambridge).

Host species Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

The OpenPlant-funded project entitled “Site-directed integration of transgenes into the nuclear genome of algae and plants using CRISPR/Cpf1/ssDNA” aimed to solve drawbacks associated with current methods for nuclear transformation, which results in random integration of transgenic DNA. The plan was to firstly develop the method for the green alga and biotech host Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, and then try to adapt this specific method for land plants and compare it with similar methods being developed.

The students quickly learned that research can present unexpected challenges. Nonetheless, they remained determined to tackle the problem! Having achieved half of the tasks of the project, Nandor returned to Aberdeen to continue his degree with the thought “I wish I would have had more time to work on this interesting project”. Darius came to the rescue soon after and, with equal enthusiasm, took up where Nandor left off. He is currently in the final stage of his final year research project and is gathering data that indicate that single-stranded DNA fixes nuclease-induced DNA cuts (via homologous recombination) better than exogenous double-stranded DNA.

Darius’s words “I have really enjoyed making progress with the project and learning about CRISPR, despite the inevitable multitude of 96-well plates I have had to face!” capture both the joy and hard work of scientific research.

We thank again OpenPlant for the support and will be sharing progress in the near future.

By Dr Gonzalo Mendoza (University of Cambridge)

New OpenPlant Programme Manager at the John Innes Centre in Norwich

Hi all,

Dieuwertje van der Does, OpenPlant Programme Manager

My name is Dieuwertje van der Does and since February this year I am replacing Colette Matthewman as OpenPlant Programme Manager at the John Innes Centre in Norwich.

Previously, I obtained my PhD in the Netherlands, and worked as postdoctoral fellow at the Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich to study the plant immune system. Before joining OpenPlant I spent two years at the BecA-ILRI Hub in Nairobi, Kenya, where I was Programme Lead for the 2Blades Foundation to aid the implementation of biotechnological solutions to crop diseases in East Africa. I am very excited to be able to contribute to the OpenPlant mission and accelerate the adoption of synthetic biology innovations in the real world. I am looking forward to our work together!