Citizen Fly Lab's mobile laboratory brings the PCR technique to the classrooms

The Citizen Fly Lab activity is developed within the citizen science project Melanogaster: Catch The Fly!, in which students and teachers from populations in Spain and other European countries contribute by collecting and classifying flies of the Drosophila genus, in fields near their educational centers, with the scientific goal of understanding how organisms adapt to the environment. Currently #MelanogasterCTF has the participation of twelve Spanish schools, one school from Germany, two schools from Ukraine and one school from France. To increase citizen participation in the analyzes after the collection and classification of Drosophila samples, the Citizen Fly Lab activity has been launched.

The mobile molecular biology laboratory Citizen Fly Lab has all the necessary material to carry out the extraction, amplification and visualization of the DNA of the biological samples analyzed.. Specifically, it consists of a DNA amplification (PCR) machine, an electrophoresis gel for visualization of the results, as well as pipettes and the reagents necessary to carry out the experiments. The participants contribute in all the processes necessary for the validation of the mobile elements: from the design using bioinformatic programs of primers, necessary to perform the PCR, to the analysis and interpretation of the data generated in order to reach conclusions that later transmitted to scientists.

The Citizen Fly Lab workshop also includes a virtual theoretical session prior to the experimental session in which the scientific relevance of the citizen science project #MelanogasterCTF is made known in which the activity is framed and the basic concepts of evolutionary biology (adaptation, genetic variability, mutations and mobile elements) and the experimental techniques that will be used are introduced the students.

Citizen Fly Lab activity is directed by Miriam Merenciano, postdoctoral researcher at the Evolutionary and Functional Genomics Laboratory from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE, CSIC-UPF), led by Josefa González, scientific director of #MelanogasterCTF. Citizen Fly Lab is an activity carried out within the #MelanogasterCTF citizen science project directed by the Evolutionary and Functional Genomics Laboratory (IBE, CSIC-UPF) and the scientific dissemination platform Science in Your World. The Genomics, Bioinformatics and Evolution group also participates in the project (GGBE) of the Department of Genetics and Microbiology of the UAB and the European Drosophila Population Genomics Consortium (DrosEU). This project has the collaboration of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology-Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (FECYT), of the European Research Council (ERC) and the General CSIC Foundation (FGCSIC) inside the program Science Counts.