On Tuesday evening I had the pleasure of attending A Pint of Science at the Panton Arms, a pub famous in Cambridge for the Panton Principles – a set of rules for good scientific practice created over a pint in 2009. A Pint of Science is an international event seeking to “deliver interesting, fun and relevant cutting-edge science talks in an accessible format to the public – in the pub”. The organisers of the event couldn’t have chosen a more suitable location in terms of comfort, with the backroom of the Panton Arms housing comfy armchairs and sofas. Pubs are regularly frequented by scientists and a pint with colleagues can, and has, served as a source of inspiration for many over the years. After grabbing my free beer (included in the ticket price), I sat down on a sofa and admired the decoration. The organisers had gone to great lengths to create the right atmosphere, with scientific posters around the room displaying biological phenomena such as cell division and embryogenesis, and they even went so far as providing their own branded beer mats.

The topic of the evening was DNA mapping, and it featured four established scientists (Dr Jeff Barrett, Dr Duncan Odom, Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith, and Dr Ros Jackson) speaking on topics ranging from investigating genome-wide associations and regulatory mechanisms through to the exciting (yet controversial) new fields of epigenetics and next generation sequencing. Each speaker presented for approximately half an hour, and the event was around three hours in total. I was concerned that this would drag on and leave people feeling bored and restless, but thankfully the speakers were pleasantly engaging (although I think the beer may have helped too).

During breaks between speakers, the event organisers set about recruiting audience members for some entertaining tasks. These included a biology-themed pub quiz and packing several metres of string into a small vial, representing the two metres of DNA packed into each of our cells. Yet one task really stood out, and this involved extracting DNA from audience saliva. Three cups were handed out to different audience members, each containing salt water, detergent, or ethanol. Participants were asked to rinse their mouths with the salt water and spit it back into the cups provided, and then to stir in the detergent. After a few moments of stirring, they were instructed to pour ethanol into the solutions in order to precipitate the DNA, and this resulted in a white stringy substance forming in the upper layer of the solution. Several audience members had just extracted their own DNA. In a pub! This impressed both the non-scientists and scientists alike.

However, this brings me to my one criticism of the event. At the beginning, one of the speakers conducted a quick poll to gauge the general composition of the audience. It emerged that approximately 75 per cent of the room were scientists, and a good half of those were biologists, with a few geneticists present (myself included). This begs the question: how successful was the event at public outreach? Most of the people I spoke to were scientists at graduate level or higher.

Nonetheless, this event was fun and engaging, and it brought together scientists from a range of disciplines. This element shouldn’t be overlooked, as cross-disciplinary discussion is vitally important in science in that it can offer fresh perspectives on research that scientists may not otherwise consider. And most importantly of all, the event successfully provided a fun and relaxed opportunity for both scientists and non-scientists to hear about current research efforts around the University of Cambridge.