Hands-on Introduction to Sterile Technique and E.Coli Culturing

Bacteria are everywhere, and learning to work with them is one of the most useful skills in biotech. No prior lab experience needed. E.coli is the most widely used organism in biology, from research labs that engineer new traits into bacteria to factories that grow them to produce things like insulin. This is the second class in our four-part Introduction to Biohacking series, and what you learn here will carry into the rest of it and any lab work you do afterward. We'll be working with a safe, non-disease-causing strain of E.coli, a common gut bacteria. We'll show you how to grow them, how to keep your cultures clean from other microbes, and the small habits that make the difference between a successful culture and a failed one. Then comes the fun part: you'll grow your own bacteria.…