The CNAG participated in the Researchers’ Night (Nit de la Recerca) organized by BIOcomuniCA’T at the CosmoCaixa Barcelona on 27 September 2013.

The program of free activities was focused on Rare Diseases and aimed to show society the contributions of researchers in this field and get a deeper insight into scientific topics through entertaining activities such as interactive science shows, hands-on experiments or workshops. The European Commission kicked off this initiative in 2005 and it has since gained popularity with good public turnout.

María Méndez-Lago, researcher of the Technology Implementation and Development Team at the CNAG and member of BIOcomuniCA’T, organized an interactive activity to explain how genome sequencing and analysis is used in the research of Rare Diseases. The activity was coorganized with Javier Prado a researcher from Tomás Marqués’ group at the IBE-UPF and focused specifically in albinism of Snowflake, the white gorilla whose genome was sequenced at the CNAG.

Other institutions collaborating in the Nit de la Recerca were the Center for Biomedical Network Research on Rare Diseases (Ciberer), the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (Idibell), the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG) and the Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR), among others.