Danio adventure. Developmental biology of the zebrafish in science popularisation

ABSTRACT

Science popularisation festivals attract more and more people every year, showing that there is a need to satisfy public curiosity. Such events are good occasions to disseminate knowledge to a large audience. The results of scientific research bring advances for mankind. Since research mostly depends on public funds, it is important to gain understanding and support for it. Scientists are also responsible for educating people in important aspects of science. In a wider perspective, science popularisation may be relevant to influencing decision-making government agencies e.g. regarding legislation about the use of animals in biomedical research. In this paper, we present one of the approaches to knowledge dissemination, namely the independent educational project, which has a more flexible formula, and may give more benefits than science festivals. Based on our experience in implementing educational projects connected with biology, we provide examples of the workflow of such a project and some useful tips. We show some quantitative data underlining the significant educational effect of this specific approach. Science popularisation in this form not only provides significant benefits both for the participants and the tutor, such as satisfaction and inspiration, but also a well-heard voice in public debate and/or useful preliminary experimental research results.

KEYWORDS:

• Science popularisation
• educational project
• zebrafish
• model organism
• developmental biology

Acknowledgments

We thank the Department of Animal Developmental Biology members for supporting the projects. We especially thank dr Damian Lewandowski and dr Joanna Niedbalska-Tarnowska for their contribution to the projects implementation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. Origin of the title: DANiO is an acronym for ‘Danio Adventure! Nauka i Odkrycia’ created from English and Polish words. ‘Nauka i Odkrycia’ means Science and Discoveries.

Additional information

Funding

The project DANiO was funded by the City Council of Wroclaw and organized by the Academy of Young Scholars and Artists and the Department of Animal Developmental Biology, Institute of Experimental Biology, University of Wroclaw. The project e-danio. Dive for knowledge! was funded by the Foundation for Polish Science, Poland [Grant No.: 101/UD/SKILLS/2014]. The subsidy from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education for scientific activity 2019.