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DIYbio: A Citizen’s Call to Synthesize

I working with the collective The Grafting Parlour, as part of the e-MobiLArt on a project which will be exhibited at the 2009 Thessaloniki Biennale, State Museum of Thessaloniki, Greece in May 2009, and will travel to the Academy of Fine Arts in Poland next fall.
One part of the project: Growing Light and Other Conversations,  is a playful scientific experiment which triggers expressive genes in photosensitive bacteria. In other words, a strain of bacteria containing expressive florescent proteins (GFP) responds to interactions by glowing
Subjects that The Grafting Parlour addresses include:
• Green light bulb:  Can photo-reactive yeast be a light bulb?
• Inter-species communication:  what would you say to bacteria?
• Bacteria as building blocks:  what would you make?

Another part: A Citizen’s Call to Synthesize, is a focus on DIYbio efforts in this area.
We are collaborating with synthetic biologist Dr. Natalie Kuldell and her MIT laboratory, developing new interfaces to communicate with organism via internet and mobile.
We are invited  to give a workshop this coming Nov. and design a working module with her students. One of the ideas that came up for example, was communicating with bacteria / yeast via SMS.
Looking for ITP students to create interesting applications to communicate with bacteria. This could be either part of a class or a project individual students can take on. Which student of course will be credited for. It would also be interesting to open a portal between  ITP students and Natalie’s students at MIT.
contact:  nurit bar-shai :// www.nuritbarshai.com / n@nuritbarshai.com

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