Mobile DNA lab has already reached 50,000 pupils!
Date: Thursday 26th March, 2009
Location: The Hague
The Minister of Education, Culture and Science, Prof. Ronald Plasterk (himself an ex DNA researcher) took time off from his busy schedule to visit the school, the Haganum Grammer School in Den Haag, to present the mobile labs trophy to the lucky 50,000st pupil, Dilan Aydin.��
Several years ago, in Wageningen, the concept of the mobile DNA lab
was born and the WU and CBSG collaborated to make this idea (where
University students visit high schools with advanced equipment to
perform a genomics experiment in the class) a great success.
Three years ago, together with our sister centres CGC, NBIC, Kluyver and CMSB, and following significant financial support from the Netherlands Genomics Initiative, this concept was developed into a truely nation - wide activity where schools can choose between 5 different mobile labs on diverse topics such as cancer, bioinformatics and protein modelling.
The popularity of this activity is huge - this year alone we will visit almost 800 school classes (ca 16,500 pupils) - and bookings for the whole year filled up within about 10 days of activating the website. Today, less than 3 years from going national, the 50,000st pupil attended a DNAlab. By chance this was the WU/CBSG lab 'Prenatal research on plants' where PCR-based marker technology is used to investigate the genetics of potato genotypes (parents + progeny).
(Photo courtesy of Sascha Schalkwijk).