Marbles, Matches and Cryopreservation: ATP-Bio Takes Science to the Minnesota State Fair
How could cryopreservation help save lives? At the Minnesota State Fair this year, visitors to the NSF ATP-Bio booth got to explore that question through a hands-on activity that turned a complex scientific challenge into a game of matching, strategy and discovery.
On Wednesday, September 2, ATP-Bio staff and UMN Center trainees hosted the Center’s booth in the Crossroads Building at UMN Central, where dozens upon dozens of Fair-goers — young and not-so-young — stopped to learn more about ATP-Bio, cryopreservation and the possibilities of “stopping biological time.”
The booth featured several interactive activities designed to make cryopreservation accessible and engaging for a general audience. New this year was the Marble Match Activity, created by Adrienne Ricker, PhD, ATP-Bio EWD Program Support Specialist.
A life-saving match
The Marble Match was designed to make one of the challenges of organ transplantation tangible.
Participants were given color-coded marbles representing donor organs and a randomized list of patients waiting for transplants. Their task was to match each organ with a compatible patient.
In the first round, there was no way to store an unmatched organ. If a match could not be made, the organ had to be discarded — a simplified representation of the challenges that can lead to donor organs going unused when a suitable recipient is not available at the right time.
Then came the cryobank.
In the second round, participants could place unmatched “organs” into a cryobank, allowing them to be stored until the right patient arrived. By adding the ability to preserve the organs, participants could see how extending biological shelf life could change the outcome.
The activity offered a simple visualization of a much bigger idea: cryopreservation could potentially transform a high-loss process into a more flexible, life-saving supply chain by giving organs more time to find the right patient.
From board game to biology
The Marble Match was inspired by the popular board game Potion Explosion, designed by Lorenzo Silva, Andrea Crespi and Stefano Castelli. Ricker adapted the concept to create an activity that would allow Fair-goers to experience, rather than simply hear about, the challenges and potential of cryopreservation.
For participants, the result was a fun and memorable introduction to a complex scientific problem. For ATP-Bio, it was another opportunity to bring the Center’s research and vision beyond the laboratory and into the community.
Through activities like Marble Match, ATP-Bio continues to explore new ways to make the science of preserving living biological systems understandable and accessible to everyone.
NSF ATP-Bio — Making Living Systems Accessible to All!
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NSF Advanced Technologies for the Preservation of Biological Systems (ATP-Bio): National Science Foundation ERC under Grant No. EEC 1941543
