Cultivarium — an applied research lab making non-model organisms accessible across the tree of life

Cultivarium is an applied research lab, industrializing the study and engineering of our living world. We build open-source tools, growth media, and protocols that make non-model organisms — across the entire tree of life, from bacteria and archaea to fungi, plants, and animals — accessible to study and engineer.

Most of life is uncultured and genetically intractable. Cultivarium develops growth profiles, DNA-delivery protocols, and molecular tools for hundreds of organisms that have never been engineered in the lab, and releases the data, methods, and software openly to the scientific community.

Open-source tools and resources

• DNA Delivery — electroporation methods for delivering DNA into non-model organisms.
• POSSUM Toolkit — plasmid libraries to identify functional plasmids.
• MACKEREL Toolkit — libraries to identify functional promoter–RBS elements.
• MicrobeMod — software for methylation calling from bacterial genomes.
• GenomeSPOT — predicts microbial growth conditions from amino-acid composition.
• Cultivarium Organism Portal — data, methods, and community knowledge for your target organism.

Across the tree of life

Cultivarium's work spans the full tree of life: bacteria (~1 trillion estimated species), archaea (~10 billion), fungi (~3.8 million), plants (~400,000), invertebrates (~7.7 million), and vertebrates (~70,000).

Locations and careers

Cultivarium is headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts, USA, with a UK laboratory in London opening in Fall 2026. We are hiring scientists and engineers — see open roles at cultivarium.org/careers or contact info@cultivarium.org.

Explore more from Cultivarium: the open-source tools (DNA Delivery, POSSUM, MACKEREL, MicrobeMod, GenomeSPOT), the Cultivarium blog, Cultivarium Radio, PRISM, the fungal biology program, and the Organism Portal.