OpenPlant at Genspace, Brooklyn NY

Genspace is the world’s first community biology lab — a place where people of all backgrounds can learn, create, and grow with the life sciences (https://www.genspace.org).

Since 2009, they have served the greater New York area by providing hands-on STEAM education programs for youth and adults, cultural and outreach events for the public, and a membership program to support New York’s community of creatives, researchers, and entrepreneurs.

Genspace hosts a broad set of scientific projects and outreach activities. These include the OpenPlant collaboration (https://www.genspace.org/community-projects). Genspace joins an international consortium of research to use the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha to generate complex proteins. In particular, the Genspace team are tackling use of the plant system for production of insulin (https://www.awesomefoundation.org/en/projects/117138-the-open-plant-community-biology-project)

M. polymorpha has traits that make it ideal for bioengineering. Its small size and fast lifecycle, allows experiments to be carried out quickly and easily. he Genspace project starts with the basics: cloning and propagating liverwort cultures. The first engineering aspect of the project has been to “domesticate” this organism, making it easier for researchers to work with, followed by practicing transformation procedures to express visible reporter genes. As group members learn to work with this plant, they plan to build novel circuits and express interesting proteins such as antibodies, cytochromes, and inteins.

Information about joining Genspace can be found here: https://www.genspace.org/join-the-lab

The Genspace lab is well-equipped, with supplies and equipment including:
Spectrophotometer
Plate reader
Microscopes
Refrigerators, -20 and -80°C Freezers
Clean hood
Opentrons OT-2 liquid handling robot
Illumina MiniSeq Next-Gen Sequencer
Micropipettors and Tabletop Centrifuges
DNA and protein gel electrophoresis equipment
Thermocyclers, including qPCR machine
Heat Blocks and Water Baths
Separate incubators for microbiology and mycology
Autoclave
Centrifuge tubes (1.5, 15 and 50 mL) and spectrophotometer cuvettes
5, 10 and 25 mL serological pipettes
Gloves
Petri Dishes
Pipette tips
Defined and Complex Bacterial Media +/- Agar
Selection antibiotics (Amp, Kan, Chlor)
Agarose, loading buffer, DNA ladders, 50x TAE, gel stains
Assorted buffers and common reagents

Genspace has been awarded a grant from the Illumina Corporate Foundation for our Youth STEM Initiatives. The award includes a MiniSeq DNA Sequencing System, BaseSpace Sequencing Hub License, service contract agreements, library preparation kits and sequencing reagents.