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The Genoa Science Festival is one of the most important scientific outreach events organized every year in the city of Genoa in Italy. Spread over the entire city and surrounding areas, the festival hosts hundreds of exhibitions, practical laboratory activities and lectures by eminent scientists: literally a marathon for schools and interested members of the public who want to experience what is happening in science.

Every year the festival presents a programme of activities under a universal theme. This year’s topic was the “Future” — a reflection of how today’s science will effect our future. The event attracted more than 200,000 visitors, the majority of whom came specifically to take part in the practical activities. This year, for the first time, the European Learning Laboratory for the Life Sciences (ELLS) was present at the festival with an activity developed by ELLS’ education officers Rossana De Lorenzi and Tommaso Nastasi. The activity Naturalmente imparziali (Naturally unbiased) focused on metagenomics. Introducing participants to the world of microbes, the first module illustrated the huge diversity of organisms in the microbial world.  The idea was to dispel the myth that all microbes are “bad” and show visitors how fundamental microbial communities are to life on our planet. After introducing the concept of man as "walking factories of microbes", participants tried their hand at identifying microbes and their function. In the second module, participants prepared, stained and observed samples of their own saliva (uggh!!) and samples from other known microbial sources, such as yogurt.  By comparing their own prepared samples with pre-stained slides of microbes from different environments, visitors were able to observe at first hand the enormous diversity in the microbial world and begin to understand the ecological importance of microbes.   The module then moved on to illustrate how genomic DNA is a hallmark of individual organisms, and present the concept of intra-specific versus inter-specific similarities of genomic sequences. This lead to a more explorative module on how can we identify and study the functions expressed by the different microorganisms. With the help of a simple DNA sequencing machine (ALDO) and DNA sequencing reaction (POLDO), the participants discovered how to sequencing DNA and took a look at how scientists are now able to sequence and analyse huge amounts of data, using next generation sequencing applications. The last station of the activity was an interactive table (TOLDO) where the participants could type in their sequences obtained from the "sequencer" and discover which gene, function and organisms their samples belonged to and how we process unknown sequences and attribute them to a group of organisms or environment. The stand was located in the ex church of Sant’Agostino, deep in the heart of Genoa, where four ELLS activities were run everyday for 7 days with more than 600 people participating. Acknowledgements to Giuseppe De Sanctis and Davide Morelli, from Leica Microsystems, who sponsored and helped setting up our microscopy labspace and to the personnel of the Museum of Sant’Agostino in Genoa. Special thanks to Fabio Di Franco from the Laici Company, who helped in the development and realization of educational equipment and to our valuable Tuscany humor-spirited scientific explainer Edoardo Lazzarini.