The Human Genome’s Secrets: Unlocked and Online

After spending decades helping unlock the secrets of the human genome, the National Human Genome Research Institute wants to unlock educational materials about the project from their home at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

The museum and the genome research institute partnered on Genome: Unlocking Life’s Code, a 4,300 square-foot exhibition that launched in spring 2013. Now the institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, wants a contractor to transform a handful of interactive elements from that exhibit into similarly interactive experiences on the exhibition’s website Unlockinglifescode.org.

The contractor will translate six “interactives” from in-museum to online experiences, according to the sources sought notice published in late March. The interactives include following the stories of people tracing their genomic ancestries and grappling with ethical, social and legal issues raised by individual genetic sequencing, the notice said.

“The online interactives must be created using responsive programming techniques enabling users on PC desktops and on mobile device such as Apple/Android tablets to fully accomplish the interactives,” the notice said.

The notice doesn’t give a timeline for when the projects will likely be completed. 

(Image via Sergey Nivens/Shutterstock.com)