On October 08 and 09, two elementary school classes from Grenoble and one from Seyssins took part in 2-hour workshops prepared by IBS scientists. After a short introduction about the living world, the classes were divided into 3 groups, each participating in one of the following workshops : fluorescent proteins, banana DNA and protein discoveries. A dozen IBS scientists led this operation for 2 days, to the delight of eighty enthusiastic kids.
Four secondary school classes from Isle d’Abeau, Villard Bonnot, Grenoble and Briançon were registered for this operation which took place on October 11 & 12 at the IBS. They discovered the principle of NMR, X-ray crystallography and electron microscopy to study proteins and learned to cultivate bacteriophages during hands-on sessions. The hundred students and their dozen teachers would have liked to spend the day experimenting and visiting all our facilities !
For the fourth year, the EPN campus institutes participated in the "Parvis des Sciences", the science village organized by Giant which offers stands, laboratory visits and conferences.
IBS volunteers helped their colleagues from ESRF, EMBL and ILL to give an overview of EPN campus activities, show protein crystals and run the DNA cutting and folding workshop. In addition, Juan Fontecilla-Camps, from the IBS Metalloprotein Laboratory, gave a lecture about the origin of Life.
Many thanks to our 30 volonteers for having contributed to the diffusion of scientific culture in a fun and accessible way and perhaps foster scientific vocations !