BeerDecoded

BeerDeCoded is a quest to sequence the DNA inside 1,000 beers from the world. The project is led by Hackuarium member Gianpaolo Rando.

Overall goal

BeerDeCoded is a research project to draw a genetic map of beers. The public contributes to every step of this project: from securing funding to doing the experiment, from testing (and tasting) the samples to publishing the results. BeerDeCoded is doing-research-together, on the streets, in the bars and in an open laboratory. BeerDeCoded is a funny iteration of the Open Food DNA project.

Beer DNA?

Beer is a living beverage. The DNA comes from its ingredients (hops, grains, yeast). There are 1,000+ yeast varieties used for brewing and 200+ hops species, each one bearing a different DNA. Artisanal beer (craft beer) is trendy: microbreweries produce a large variety of beers, each one with its unique recipe and taste. It seems impossible to taste them all, so we are making a "tree of beers" based on their biochemical composition.

Crowd-funding

At LIFT15 conference in Geneva, we discussed the project during a science crowdfunding workshop. We then joined the first Science x Kickstarter hackathon in New York (Feb 28, 2015) to craft a crowd-funding campaign for a pilot beer DNA experiment. We have been successfully funded 20 days after the launch on June 2015.

• Campaign
• Press Kit

So What now?

We received the Kickstarter payment and we are actively working on beer DNA extractions, sequencing and bioinformatics.

• All the tasks are in this Trello: https://trello.com/b/NyG1Z7A7/beerdecoded-execution
• Our last update (October 27, 2015) for our Kickstarter backers: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/489252126/beerdecoded-the-1000-beer-genomes/posts/1394351

Want to help us? Drop us a note or join a #OpenHackuarium.

Budget

We have funding for sequencing 96 beers. Rough project costs:

• 500 CHF - Beer collection
• 1000 CHF - DNA purification (we extract DNA out of the beer)
• 5500 CHF - DNA amplification and multiplexing (we amplifiy the DNA, we label it with a ID code and we pool the labeled samples inside a sequencer)
• 3000 CHF - DNA sequencing.

Other steps (manpower, bioinformatic analyses, data visualisation and communication) are done on a voluntary basis.

• Channel on Hackuarium's Slack: https://hackuarium.slack.com/messages/wg-beerdecoded
• Dedicated Slack for the Kickstarter Campaign backers: https://beerdecoded.slack.com/

Social Media

• https://twitter.com/beerdecoded
• https://www.facebook.com/BeerDeCoded

• First test of the DNA Workchoppe