Welcome to Genespace's Open Lab Project

The Open Lab is a key step towards democratization of synthetic biology. It is the complete set of knowledge, tools, and resources required to successfully develop a thriving community biolab, all created following open source principles. The project has four parts.

1. The Open Lab Blueprint, a website guide to launch and develop a sustainable community biolab. It includes the following components: starting up a lab, physical space, acquisition of key equipment, and efficiently implementing safety, standards and best practices, community-building, generating content and sustainability.
2. Open source equipment development in the form of a liquid handling robot, customizable with shareable protocols.
3. Set of IP-free fluorescent protein genes in open plasmid backbones to be made available to citizen scientists in the form of a starter activity kit.
4. Bioglyphics, a visual protocol design tool to lower the barrier of entry to synthetic biology practice, especially geared toward visual thinkers.

We feel that the Genspace Community Lab adds significant value to the New York City community. With our Open Lab Project we hope to inspire others to create their own community lab.