Team:Freiburg/HumanPractice/science fair

From 2013.igem.org

Science Fair in Freiburg

"Have you ever seen DNA?“ - This was the questions we asked the visitors at our booth at the „Wissenschaftsmarkt“ (science fair) in Freiburg. Everbody is hearing about DNA, but cannot really imagine what lies behind this mysterious substance. And as iGEMers we are working with it on a daily basis. One of our aims was to bring our favorite molecule a more in contact with people.
At our booth people could extract DNA from bananas and even touch it. We were able to show people real DNA and tried to de-mystify this completely normal molecule.
While people were busy with mashing and precipitating we used the chance to inform on synthetic biology and its application in general and about iGEM in particular.
We gained many surprised looks by people of all ages, as we pulled the DNA from our mixture and even more as told that the genome of this fruit shares approximately 50% sequence identity with the human genome.
We were able to reach a very broad public, from young to old, and busted some popular myths about the „blueprint of life“.