Introducing LiveGene!, a New Initiative in High-School Genetic Education

There is an increase awareness among scientists on the importance of education and public outreach. As scientists, our main mission is to improve the public image of basic science by promoting and explaining the contribution of simple model-organisms to research in the life sciences, particularly in genetics. To that end, we have launched a few years ago, when our laboratory was based in the UK, a new education programme called LiveGene! The programme is aimed at bringing genetics teaching to life, by using live insects in the classroom. LiveGene! was developed in collaboration with the Genetics Education Networking for Innovation and Excellence (GENIE) at the University of Leicester, and the Leicester Education Business company (LEBC). We have designed laboratory activities which make use of live organisms (mainly fruit-flies) for school/college students, which fit well within the national high-school biology curriculums. We have provided teaching material, practical training for teachers and support staff in our lab, and all of the required fly strains for class activities. All the resources were publically available from our website. We have offered training to teachers in our lab at the Department of Genetics, provided our kits to 17 schools and carried out schools visits across England. With the recent move of our laboratory to Haifa, we would like to reinstate LiveGene! in Israel. We also hope that LiveGene! will establish regular interactions between high-school educators and research scientists, bringing these two communities closer togather.