Most people don’t think of bacteria and art together, but maybe they should. Bacteria formations can cause stunning and diverse patterns that resemble museum-quality artwork.
Nan Luo, a postdoc in the You Lab, won first prize and $500 in the 2019 Envisioning the Invisible photo and image contest for her image, “Bloom,” in which she investigated these bacterial pattern formations.
The photo depicts Pseudomonas colonies growing in petri dishes and imaged with a microscope. As the colonies grow and expand, they spontaneously form complex patterns. According to Luo, “When the experimental condition changes, the patterns change too, resulting in these highly variable patterns.” The cells also carry some synthetic gene circuits with fluorescent protein genes, which allows the colonies to glow in Luo’s photo.
Aside from being fascinated by their beauty, Luo has always been interested in looking at pattern formations in bacteria because it is one of the fundamental questions in biology. “Bacterial colonies are much simpler and genetically more tractable than higher organisms,” Luo said, “but the mechanisms of pattern formation in bacteria may provide insight into the general principles of pattern formation in nature.”
Studying pattern formation in bacteria may also lay the foundation for other projects in the You Lab, such as designing synthetic gene circuits that generate patterns and using pattern-forming bacteria in biomaterial fabrication.
Luo’s winning photo will also be on display in the Fitzpatrick Center atrium until 2020.