[Lapg] Los Angeles Mycological Society April Meeting (LAMS)

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Posted on | March 20, 2010 | No Comments

David Kahn V.P. of the Los Angeles Mycological Society has extended an 
invitation to LAPG & City Repair members and friends to attend the next 
LAMS meeting featuring Noel Fong, who will be speaking on "Mushroom 
Biotechnology"

When: Monday, April 19, 2010 at 7:30pm
Where: The Times-Mirror Meeting Room at the Natural History Museum of 
Los Angeles County, 900 Exposition Boulevard.
Visit the LAMS website for directions. www.lamushrooms.org
Cost: Free + Refreshments

Ms. Fong’s presentation will start with a brief discussion and survey of 
molecular biology tools and how they are used to improve the cultivation 
and quality of Agaricus bisporus and other basidiomycetes. Topics 
include the Mushroom Genome Project, identification of gene targets for 
strain improvement, transgenics, and PCR to identify poisonous species.

While this sounds pretty technical, the talk is written for a general 
audience.

Noel’s main interests is to understand the science behind cooking and 
growing food.
She has her B.S. in Chemistry from U.C. Berkeley, an M.S. in Food 
Science and a PhD. in Microbiology from U.C. Davis, where she worked on 
understanding how sugars are taken up by wine yeasts. Most of her career 
has been in the bio-tech industry, where she engineers various yeasts to 
make drugs, and custom oils for bio fuels and nutriceuticals. To round 
out her experience, she recently spent a year in pastry school, pursuing 
one of yeast’s tastier applications.   Her hobby interest is to promote 
the appreciation of foods which are the products of microbial 
intervention: e.g. bread, cheese and wine.

Visitors are encouraged to bring in any mushrooms they may find for 
identification and display.