The Street Science Community (https://streetscience.community/) is a volunteer-based non-profit group that aims to bring science to the public. The group organizes workshops to teach pupils, students and citizens molecular biology and genetics, data-analysis, and open science by extracting, sequencing and analyzing DNA. The current project, BeerDEcoded, uses the beer to sensitize the public to molecular biology and genome-related research. Beer contains DNA that comes from its ingredients and over hundreds of microbes. In Freiburg, the group developed a first prototype of the DNA extraction and sequencing protocols using the Nanopore MinION, a portable real-time device for DNA sequencing. The results are very promising! The group has successfully identified specific brewing yeast strains from the DNA that was extracted out of bottled beer. For the bioinformatic data analysis, a workflow using Galaxy (https://streetscience.usegalaxy.eu) has been created. This open source, web-based and easy to use platform makes reproducible computational biology and bioinformatics accessible to interested citizens. Therefore, all proof-of-principle preparations are finished to start workshops and spread science into the community. The Street Science Community is supported by Bérénice Batut and Björn Grüning
The 1st public workshop will take place 31st of March in Freiburg.
Registration here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/streetsciencecommunity