OpenWetWare is a

wiki A wiki ( ) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or l ...

whose mission is "to support open research, education, publication, and discussion in biological sciences and engineering." OpenWetWare was created by graduate students at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

on April 20, 2005. Initially, it served as a private lab wiki for the labs of Drew Endy and Tom Knight at

. The site was opened up to allow any lab to join on June 22, 2005. As of April 6, 2007, the site hosted 100 research laboratories from over 40 institutions, including

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. BU was founded in 1839 by a group of Boston Methodism, Methodists with its original campus in Newbury (town), Vermont, Newbur ...

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private university, private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small g ...

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 eng ...

Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...

, and many others. The server was shut down on April 15, 2025, due to a lack of funding. In addition to laboratories, a number of scientific communities are based on the site, including

synthetic biology Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary field of science that focuses on living systems and organisms. It applies engineering principles to develop new biological parts, devices, and systems or to redesign existing systems found in nat ...

Mimulus Mimulus , also known as monkeyflowers, is a plant genus in the family (biology), family Phrymaceae, which was traditionally placed in family Scrophulariaceae. The genus now contains only seven species, two native to eastern North America and th ...

, and the BioBricks Foundation. One scientific community is the iGEM community with over 60 different teams represented on June 28, 2013, including the NRP-UEA-Norwich team and the Groningen team. OpenWetWare runs on

MediaWiki MediaWiki is free and open-source wiki software originally developed by Magnus Manske for use on Wikipedia on January 25, 2002, and further improved by Lee Daniel Crocker,mailarchive:wikipedia-l/2001-August/000382.html, Magnus Manske's announc ...

software on

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

servers. All content is available under free content licenses, specifically the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) and the

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

Attribution ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) license.

External links

OpenWetWare

References

MediaWiki websites Biology websites Electronic lab notebook 2005 establishments in the United States Internet properties established in 2005 {{Science-website-stub