From Deseret News archives:
DNA and you
At the One World Family Festival on Saturday, visitors can learn more about their own family's traits and also celebrate genetics in general. Musicians and dancers from New Zealand, Okinawa and Venezuela will entertain at the festival as visitors view the exhibit.
On that day, museumgoers will get to extract DNA from peas. They'll build edible models of a double helix out of marshmallows and licorice twists. They'll get a chance to see where they fit on the family tree of all humanity, inscribing their own leaves with personal genetic information, such as whether their earlobes are attached and whether they can roll their tongues or taste a sour substance.
The exhibit itself, "Putting DNA to Work," was developed by the National Academy of Sciences through the Marian Koshland Science Museum. The "Putting DNA to Work" exhibit was one of several interactive exhibits on display when the Koshland Museum first opened in Washington, D.C., in April 2004.
So "Putting DNA to Work" was part of the reason the Koshland got rave reviews when it opened. Science magazine wrote, "D.C.'s newest museum proves what all scientists know and the general public always suspected: Science is fun."
Only a handful of Utah Museum of Natural History employees had a chance to see the traveling exhibit before it was installed this past weekend. Utah exhibit designer Tim Lee saw it last year in Boise, and he says one of his favorite activities was a guessing game.
It is basically a lineup, like a police lineup, Lee explains. "There are pictures of Einstein, a mouse, a fly, some yeast, a chimpanzee. You have to guess what percentage of the genes of each of these matches your genes. It is supercool."
Lee says he thinks most people are familiar with DNA. They know what a double helix looks like. They know that our corn, and much of our food, actually, has been genetically modified. They know that DNA discovered at a crime scene can help catch a criminal.
But this exhibit puts everything in context, Lee says. No matter how old you are, or what you already know about DNA, he is sure you'll come away from the exhibit with a better idea of what scientists are doing with DNA right now.
Of course, Utah scientists are some who are doing the most. University of Utah researcher Mario Capecchi won the Nobel Prize for medicine last year for his work on gene targeting in the embryonic stem cells of mice. The Utah Museum of Natural History folks will expand upon the national traveling exhibit, adding displays on Capecchi and other local scientists.
