Imperial takes part in "Fun Palaces"

The resulting community genome

Imperial virology PhD student takes genes and cloning on the road as part of the Fun Palaces initiative

Potters Fields Park near Tower Bridge is not where you would usually
expect to see scientists discussing genes and cloning, but that’s
exactly what happened last weekend when Imperial virology PhD student Bentley Crudgington helped hundreds of visitors extract DNA from
strawberries as part of "Fun Palaces". Billed as a free day of events
celebrating the meeting point between art and science, the project
aimed to let families get their hands dirty in a range of activities
led by scientists and artists.

And dirty hands they got. More than 300 visitors visited Bentley's
stand at the festival, with impromptu scientists of all ages
pulverising strawberries in order to extract the fruit's DNA. Everyone
learned how to isolate the DNA from the resulting mess, and got to
take their isolated DNA with them--many of the children said the would
take it to school the following day! It was an all-ages and
all-languages affair; there were children as young as three, and some
of the experimental instructions were live-translated into Russian and
Urdu.

But Bentley got the crowd thinking too: after explaining how DNA is
built up into genes, he invited participants to dream up new genes
with new functions, using them to create a unique "community genome"
at the end. Bentley loved how people really engaged with the concepts
of genomics. “There were a lot of people on Tooley Street just showing
other people what they had been doing and explaining
about DNA," he said. "That was great to see.”

As part of the event, Bentley also gave a talk called Myths and
Monsters on slightly more speculative topics. He answered essential
biomedical questions from the families in the audience, such as how to
make a zombie, whether drinking blood can keep you eternally youthful
and what to do it you fall in love with a werewolf.