Securing regrowth in the scientific community

Tomorrow’s research starts today. SciLifeLab seized the opportunity to make children and young adults interested in life science during SciFest 2013.

During the science festival SciFest March 22-23 SciLifeLab was on site among exhibitors from university, municipality, companies and organizations to show children and young adults between the ages of 7 and 18 how exciting and rewarding science can be.

At one workshop the DNA code was explained using pearl bracelets where each pearl represented one base and the children got to write their names in codons. In the adjacent workshop the visitors got to microscope tissue sections from different parts of the human body and learn to tell them apart. Other stations offered insight into the number of cells in your body or the development of zebrafish embryos.

The older visitors did some gene hunting on the Internet, starting with a gene sequence and ending with a protein. They also got to find out in which organ the protein is expressed and the function of that organ.

The science festival hosted 3300 visitors and hopefully a number of future researchers had their eyes opened to life science.