Kombucha Genomics is a collaborative citizen science effort working to gain a better understanding of everyone’s favorite vinegar-y beverage - Kombucha! Kombucha is a fermented beverage made from a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast(SCOBY). A SCOBY takes a mixture of black tea and sugar, degrades the sugars through anaerobic fermentation, and ultimately turns it into a refreshing beverage.
We’re working to learn as much as we can about the micro-organism masterminds behind this delicious and ancient drink. Some of our next steps include: ribosomal sequencing of SCOBY micro-organisms, isolation of particular yeast and bacterial strains, and organizing classes to introduce community members to our work and the biological sciences.
Here are some recipes you can try out:
If you’re interested in contributing to the project feel free to get in touch with any of our colloborators or e-mail us for more info.
You can also read more about the project on our wiki. Contributing to the wiki is easy, so long as you know how to format text with markdown. This easy to use syntax lets you quickly and easily format text for the web. It’s how much of this website was made, and how all of our wiki articles are written. To quickly get up to speed, check out Github’s Tutorial. I also find Adam Pritchard’s cheat-sheet really helpful.