Games, DNA and Glowing Animals

On May 7, the University of Toronto St. George chapter of the Science Rendezvous festival held their 2022 event virtually. This one-day annual event aims to promote science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM) to students and members of the public of all ages, with the theme focusing on “Discovery” this year. Over 500 participants registered this year with 24 science fair presenters. As par with tradition, the Department of Molecular Genetics Graduate Student Association (GSA) took part in this year’s Science Rendezvous with three online booths. GSA VP-external Kiki Huang oversaw recruiting volunteers and organizing the booths. In addition to the GSA, MoGen and Donnelly Centre graduate students Sylvia Almeida, Clarence Yeung, and Urvi Bhojoo from the Boone/Andrews lab held a talk discussing the impacts and significance of yeast in scientific research.  

Tim Ng and GSA co-president Matthew Rok kicked off the first live session booth titled “Participate in Science Through Video Games.” The video introduced attendees to various national and global citizen science projects, including how scientists integrate and utilize video games to demonstrate/portray their research. They then demonstrated and played through the Stanford-Carnegie Mellon developed citizen science game EteRNA, which solves puzzles with RNA molecules, and the DNA puzzle Phylo, a McGill-designed game focused on solving multiple sequence alignment problems.  

Afterwards, Yiqing Lu, Ryan Marks, GSA graphic designer Emily Xiong and Bushra Hasque hosted the DNA Extraction Challenge. In this part, they explained what DNA is, extracted DNA from cocoa beans, strawberries, and saliva live on camera and hosted a Q&A session afterwards. They then gave participants a chance to attempt the procedure at home with a take-home protocol sheet and observation table.  

In the last MoGen booth, Nicole Lindsay-Mosher, Ryan Chieu, GSA Career Resource coordinator Iosifina Fotiadou and myself hosted the final session, “Glow-in-the-Dark Model Organisms.” It started by explaining what model organisms were, why they’re critical in science and the role of fluorescent proteins. We then asked attendees Kahoot or Jeopardy-style questions, such as differentiating between wild-type and mutant, with pictures and videos of fluorescently tagged transgenic models and followed with an open Q&A session.  

Readers can view the full agenda and previous recordings on the UofT Science Rendezvous website. Future attendees can also submit for next year’s SciArt gallery or participate in the SRHacks. We hope people will attend or volunteer for next year's Science Rendezvous festival, which will hopefully be held in person!