Exclamations of laughter and excitement bounced off the walls of the Orpheum Children’s Science Museum as children gathered for the Institute for Genomic Biology’s Genome Day on Saturday. 

More than 480 people attended this year and were assisted by more than 100 volunteers made up mostly of faculty members and graduate students.

“As a public land grant university, we recognize that public engagement and outreach is very important,” said Melissa McKillip, director of development and outreach at the institute.

Genome Day hosted more than a dozen “adventure stations” to get kids involved in and learn more about various aspects of science including bioenergy, selective breeding, genomes and cell types. Upon completion of each activity, the children would get a letter stamped into their bright red “Stamp-It Pass” pamphlets that in the end would declare, “I am a genome expert.”

One adventure station was titled “Dancing with Plants” and allowed kids to stand in front of a giant green screen and imitate the movements that plants make as they respond to their environment.

Another activity exposed kids to DNA extraction. DNA from bananas and strawberries was removed by mushing up the fruit and mixing it with a dish-soap-like solution, which then caused the cells to break open and release everything inside, including the genomic DNA, said station volunteer Thom Mand, graduate student.

Mand said he attended events like this as a child and always enjoyed watching “science in action.” He said it was those types of activities that influenced his decision in wanting to become a scientist and hopes occasions like Genome Day inspire other children to pursue the field as well.

This was the event’s second year and McKillip explained next year’s Genome Day is already scheduled for Nov. 1, 2014.

Genome Day is going be the institute’s annual fall semester outreach event, McKillip said. She explained that some activities may change, while others are adjusted and some, “the favorites,” will return each year.

“I liked all of them,” said Lily Wedig, student at Bottenfield Elementary School. When asked if she would return next year, Wedig nodded with an enthusiastic “yes.” 

One new activity that took place this year was Reebop, which was hosted by Project NEURON. At this station, children selected traits from cups to build offspring and see what it would look like in the end. It helped kids learn that although traits come from the parents, ultimately the offspring never looks exactly like the parents, said station volunteer Rob Wallon, graduate student.

“There are lots of important advancements in this field that are really important for everyone to know,” said Barbara Hug, clinical associate professor in Education who volunteered with Project NEURON. “And we integrate sciences so everyone can learn these ideas.”

While everyone was invited to attend, the primary audience was children in kindergarten through fourth grade. And Nicholas Vasi, director of communications, said there were both English and Spanish-speaking volunteers at each of the 15 activities to reach out to a broader portion of the community.

“The main idea was to get some of the information about these areas of science out to the younger community, get them interested … maybe establish a love or interest in science at a younger age,” Vasi said. “It’s a way for us to give back to the community and allow them to interact with our faculty, our staff and our students and learn about some of the great things that are happening at our university and at IGB.”

Edward can be reached at [email protected].