Scientists @ Work!

Today my class and I were invited for a science day in a real lab, all thanks to an organisation called Scientist @ Work.
We went to the VIB labs at the Leuven university hospital . VIB is a Flemish life sciences research institute - it wants to encourage secondary school students to seriously consider a career in science.

Today we explored the link between genotypes and phenotypes, using Drosophila melanogaster (= fruit fly) as a model organism. Via the humble fruit fly we looked at the effects of certain genes on the development of external morphology, neuronal architecture and behaviour.

In this particular experiment the students are doing here they were comparing wild fruit flies with tetanus toxic infected fruit flies. It was a very interesting and motivating day of science