DNA rocks

Millions of DNA molecules came out of the Espacio Moviestar marquee in little plastic tubes last April 10 and 11. Their owners had visited the PRBB stand at the “Live Research” fair organised by the PCB. About 1,300 people, mostly students between 14 and 20 from 36 different schools went to the fair to learn about how oceans move or how to use virtual reality to stimulate a brain affected by ictus. At the PRBB stand, Hagen Tilgner (CRG), Eneritz Agirre (UPF-GRIB) and myself explained to the assistants the Encode and Eurasnet projects, two international networks in which groups from the different centres at the PRBB work. The aim of these projects is, respectively, to catalogue all the functional elements of the DNA and to study alternative splicing at a genomic level. The participants showed a great interest in the research, demonstrated by the many interesting questions asked. However, the excitement they felt about the DNA extraction from their own saliva beat everything else.

p.s. I, however, did NOT manage to extract my own DNA... :(