Events

On the 27th of September, we home brewed 10 liters of IPA beer for the BeerDEcoded project!

On the 19th of February we introduced the BeerDEcoded project and the Street Science Community to a scientific audience. The aim was to increase the publicity of our project and to attract scientists who are interested to join the project. At the beginning of a galaxy workshop we gave a 15 minutes talk followed by questions from the audience.

On the 8th of December, we hold our one-day workshop of the BeerDEcoded project for high school teachers in the biology labratory of the University of Freiburg. We did prepare already extracted DNA of a beer sample for sequencing. The aim of the workshop was to get teachers interested in our Workshops and establish contacts to high schools. At the end of the workshop we had a session where we dicussed possible cooperations. In the end we came up with a plan to split the workshop into several small 2h sessions, so that pupils can do this as one biology teaching unit e.g. over one month.

On the 27nd of October we tested the new flongle nanopore flowcell to see if we can substitute the more accurate but also more expensive nanopore flowcell with the flongle, to sequence the DNA within our workshop. The second aim of our internal workshop was to test the updated sequencing instruction protocol and see if members of the group, who did not perform the DNA sequencing until now could follow the protocol easily. We could identify some weak spots in the protocol, which could have let to the low amount of sequenced read outcome on this day. To rule out any issues of the sequenced probe or the newly used flongle we repeated the sequencing with more experienced people on the 26nd of November. Both experiences helped us to impove not only the protocol but also identify operational issues which a person without lab experience could face.

On the 27nd of September we tested a new DNA extraction protocol for the BeerDEcoded project. Our intention was to simplify the yeast DNA extraction steps, so it is easier for people without lab experience to follow the steps of the extraction protocol. Initially the DNA isolation was performed with two crucial washing steps. Frist we let the DNA bind to some beads and second a column washing step was performed. In the new protocol we do simplfiy this step by preparing the cells differently so we can only wash using alcohol to remove the DNA from unwanted substances. The extraction itself was performed by two members without lab experience of the Street Science Community with the guidence of our very helpful lab expert Martina. We extracted the yeast DNA from 3 beer bottles and the results where convincing enough to change the protocol to the easier and more understandable new one.

On the 22st to 23rd of March, we held our first workshop with high school pupils for the BeerDEcoded project in Freiburg. Four pupils and one external participant made us a group of 10 people in total.

The Galaxy Community Conference was held in Freiburg, Germany, 1-6 July. And the Street Science Community participated to the event.

Pint of Science brings scientists to discuss their latest research with you. During May 20-22 2019, thousands of researchers across 400 cities and 24 countries shared their discoveries with the public in their local pub, bar or cafe.

On the 31st of March, we hold our first public workshop for the BeerDEcoded project in Freiburg. Some students and external people participated to this event: 16 peoples in total, including us.

Today, we are happy to announce that our project received a Mozilla Science Mini Grant award.

Today, we had an unofficial kickoff of the BeerDEcoded project. We poured Beer into the MinION’s pores: sequencing yeast extracted from Beer with Nanopore.