Biological networks: using what we know from the www and social networks for biological discovery in corn and horses!

[mozfest-bot]

[ ID ] e57f23a3-d704-4c61-a3e3-524f536d5431

[ Submitter's Name ] Rob Schaefer [ Submitter's Affiliated Organisation ] University of Minnesota [ Submitter's Twitter ] @CSciBio

[ Space ] science [ Secondary Space ] youth

[ Format ] learning-lab, format-not-sure

Description

The session would focus on current scientific research being performed in computational biology and bioinformatics. Participants would be given a whirlwind introduction into the history of genomics starting with the completion in sequencing the human genome to today, where we have 1000s of genomes worth of data. Genome sequencing technology has evolved so quickly that we are now able to cheaply generate Tera-bytes of data in organisms we previously knew very little about. Participants will engage in hands on browsing using several open source tools to instill a sense of scale of the data a genome contains. Finally, we will discuss current barriers and challenges to how this data is being handled in the field. As a community, we now have the opportunity to have an impact to ensure that publicly funded data being generated in agriculturally and medically important organisms remains open and available to all.

Agenda

The session would be broken into three different parts. First, an introduction lecture or session would establish core ideas about what a genome is, how we measure it, and why it is important. Second, several hands on activities would allow participants to experience the types of data, as well as the scale of data contained in a genome. I've previously developed several paper based, hands on activities for project outreach targeting high school classrooms. I've also developed several computer demos that would demonstrate open source tools developed in our lab. Finally, we would end the session with a discussion on what we think the future holds for genomic data and how an open web can facilitate that. Participants could also ask questions and discuss topics with a scientist.

Participants

Background and lecture portions of the session could be led from a projector or a monitor. Hands on and computer demo activities could accommodate 2-5 people per activity, so having several activities could accommodate up to 20-25 people.

Outcome

I would aim to engage and to interact with participants during the festival as best as I could. Afterwards, the materials and demos would be available in repository so that activities could easily be shared with others. Originally, the materials were designed to be taught to high school teachers so they are either low cost, paper based or accessed online. If participants are educators, I'd be happy to follow up with them on questions or suggestions of using the activity in their classrooms.

[edrushka]

🌽 🐴 👍

[arlissc]

This session will not be able to come to the festival as they were not offered a stipend and they don't have other means of funding

[arlissc]

This session has been closed