Microbial art


Microbial art, agar art, or germ art is artwork created by culturing microorganisms in certain patterns. The microbes used can be bacteria, yeast fungi, or less commonly, protists. The microbes can be chosen for their natural colours, or can be engineered to express fluorescent proteins and viewed under ultraviolet light to make them fluoresce in colour.

Methods

s are used as a canvas, while pigmented or fluorescent bacteria and yeasts represent the paint. In order to preserve a piece of microbial art after a sufficient incubation, the microbe culture is sealed with epoxy.
Microbe species can be chosen for their natural colours to form a palette for the artwork. Suitable species of bacteria include Bacillus subtilis, Chromobacterium violaceum, Escherichia coli, Micrococcus luteus, Micrococcus roseus, Proteus mirabilis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Pseudomonas fluorescens, Serratia marcescens, Staphylococcus aureus, and Vibrio fischeri.
Yeast species – which are fungi – used include Saccharomyces cerevisiae Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus ochraceus, Aureobasidium pullulans, Candida albicans, Candida sake, Candida sp., Cladosporium herbarum, Cladosporium resinae, Epicoccum nigrum, Fusarium sp., Rhodotorula sp., and Scopulariopsis brevicaulis.
Protist species used include Euglena gracilis and Physarum polycephalum.
A technique called "bacteriography" involves selectively killing certain areas of a bacterial culture with radiation, in order to produce artistic patterns. After incubation, the culture is sealed with acrylic.

Artists

, the man most commonly credited with the discovery of penicillin, was known for creating germ paintings.
The biochemist Roger Tsien won the 2008 Nobel prize for chemistry for his contributions to knowledge of green fluorescent protein. A researcher in his laboratory, Nathan Shaner, made a 2006 microbial artwork using GFP of a San Diego beach scene.

Agar Art Competition

The American Society for Microbiology hosts an annual contest for microbial art: Agar Art. The contest was organized after a picture from a Christmas tree, made by Rositsa Tashkova, went viral in 2014. The 2015 edition covered 85 submissions, of which microbial art created by Mehmet Berkmen and Maria Peñil called Neurons won first place. They have been working together since 2011 on making bacterial art. The artwork used yellow Nesterenkonia and orange Deinococcus and Sphingomonas.