A Winter Wonderland in BMB

The Department celebrated the season with the annual holiday party on December 13. This year’s theme was “Winter Wonderland,” and festivities a coat drive and a challenge to labs and offices across the department to create the best gingerbread and snowman creations.

The coat drive collected over 100 items of warm clothing, including 70 coats, plus hats, gloves, boots, and more. The donated clothing will be distributed by The Men and Families Center, a SOURCE community-based partner organization.

There were 11 entries to the gingerbread and snowman contest. The gingerbread contest winner was the Bailey Lab’s A Very Crispr Christmas, a gingerbread model of a bacterial cell fighting off a phage infection using Crispr. The snowman contest winner was the Jordan Lab’s snowmouse.

Check out the photos in our slideshow below!

A ping-pong table covered with piles of winter clothes–jackets, scarves, hats and a pair of boots

Coat drive collection

The BMB coat drive collected over 100 items of warm clothing

A gingerbread “phage” sits atop a domed “bacterium.” The front of the cell (left) has DNA gummy strands and piped icing Crispr proteins. The back of the cell (right) has white frosting eyes and a round mouth saying “oh no!”

Gingerbread contest winner

The gingerbread contest was won by the Bailey Lab’s gingerbread model of a bacterial cell using Crispr to fend off a bacteriophage attack modeled with gingerbread

A mouse-shaped “snowman” made out of white tissue paper and fluffy material, with large cupped ears, a red trash bag hat, centrifuge tube nose and blue glove hands

Snowman contest winner

The winning snowman entry was the Jordan Lab’s snowmouse

A gingerbread-style house made from lab supplies - a pipette tip box house, tree made from cut up blue gloves, a gel comb fence and PCR tubes filled with colored liquid line the path to the door.

Leung Lab gingerbread house

The Leung Lab made a gingerbread house from items found in labs

A box with frosted edges and sides has a glowing top, shining light through three candy “gels”

Kavran Lab gingerbread lightbox

The Kavran Lab created an gingerbread lightbox with candy gels

A winter scene with small tube “people” with pipette tip arms and drawn-on faces. On the right are 3 colorful “houses” made from lab supplies including clear pipette tip boxes, and on the left is a square blue “lake” with a pair of tube people, blurred f

A Very Cu Christmas

The Culotta Lab’s “A Very Cu Christmas” was a winter scene inhabited by microcentrifuge tube people, complete with ice skaters spinning around a copper blue lake