WHEN I WALK into SoundBio Lab, tonight’s lab leader, Emma Snyder, is surrounded by 10 visitors who all have one thing on their mind: kombucha.
These aren’t just folks who enjoy drinking the fermented black tea. These folks want to understand the microbial ecology of the increasingly popular beverage. In other words, these curious chemists want to learn about the tiny organisms that make kombucha, well, kombucha.
“Kombucha doesn’t get researched a lot because it isn’t a pressing scientific priority, but lots of people are interested in it,” says Shoreline Community College professor and SoundBio board president Orlando de Lange. “That makes it a great project for our lab.”
Opened in 2017 and located a few blocks from the University of Washington, SoundBio is perhaps best described as a biology makerspace. “This is a place where people come in and do research…
