🔬Biology Zero

This was a course I was really excited about, and I believe it lived to the expectations.

During the course we explored a myriad of concepts ranging from conducting experiments, the ethical implications of GMOs and general human interference in the field of biology, to the use of microscopes. It truly opened up the posibilities I didn't know were available to me as a designer.

During the first class, we mostly learned about the implications and background of biohacking and synthetic biology. This, in order to change our mindset about what scientists are and are capable of doing and comparing ourselves to their abilities. We also proceeded to make the preparations for the next day of the course. For this we needed some petri dishes with certain agar mixtures to grow crazy stuff on them.

The thing was simple: choose a recipe, prepare it, fill the petri and finally "contaminate" it. The last part was the most fun. Our contamination mediums included boogers, water bottles, hair, food leftovers, among other things.

Then what was left was to wait...

In the end (some days after the course ended) we finally had some visible growth!

For the second part of the course, we proceeded to observe different things with the microscope. Things such as: fish food (filled with zooplankton), yeast, and bacteria. We also got to prepare our own plates to observe under the microscope.

Finally for the last day, we explored other organisms. Specifically Spirulina. This was specially close to home due to the fact that it is related to food and growing stuff yourself at home.

For the final submission of the class, we had to unite all the knowledge we had gathere throught the course and add some creative spice to it. We needed to design our own GMO, and give a reasoning behind it. Click below to see what I did: a regenerative approach to the meat industry.

🧬Create your own GMO