On a hot weekend in July, Bay Area science lovers queued up for their turn to moonlight as a genetic detective tasked with identifying a mysterious animal species based solely on a fragment of its DNA, part of an “escape room” experience hosted by Northeastern University.
One by one, the savvy scientific investigators donned lab coats and got to work, inspecting the incomplete genetic code and translating its three-character DNA codes into letters that could be rearranged to form clues about the species in question. Once they cracked the puzzle and entered the correct letter sequence into a cylindrical “cryptex” tool, the animal was revealed and the game was won.
The interactive display at the Open Sauce science fair in San Mateo was created by Northeastern’s Jen Cassano 一 chemistry professor and faculty coordinator for the Oakland bioinformatics master’s program 一 and graduate student Aamna Zia Ullah Sheikh. Drawing on themes from Northeastern’s bioinformatics master’s program, whose inaugural Oakland cohort graduated in 2026, Cassano and Sheikh aimed to introduce the next generation of scientists to the complex field of study and its particular importance in the Bay Area.
Bioinformatics combines biology, computer science and data analysis to help researchers make sense of large amounts of biological data, including DNA, said Maxim Wolf, director of the bioinformatics master’s program. The discipline can be applied to areas ranging from cancer and infectious disease research to population genetics, agriculture and drug discovery.
Read more at Northeastern Global News
Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University
