Agar Art Con­test an All-Around Win­ner

by Jamie Henzy

Su­per­heroes. Cre­ated by Sanne West­hoff and a cast of Strep­to­myces coeli­color mu­tants on soy flour man­ni­tol.

Few peo­ple know that Alexan­der Flem­ing, the dis­cov­erer of peni­cillin, loved to cre­ate pic­tures on his agar plates, ren­der­ing im­ages of bal­leri­nas, houses, and fight­ers with his beloved mi­crobes. Writ­ing for the Smith­son­ian mag­a­zine, Rob Dunn states that, "Fleming's dis­cov­ery... was a func­tion of his eye for the rare, an artist's eye. Other sci­en­tists had un­doubt­edly seen Peni­cil­lium grow­ing on their petri dishes be­fore Flem­ing, but they had thrown those dishes away as fail­ures." De­vel­op­ing an "artist's eye" – the abil­ity to look deeply at a sub­ject and ap­pre­ci­ate nu­ances that can re­main hid­den in plain sight – is a skill that ben­e­fits sci­en­tists and artists alike. In this spirit, ASM launched its first agar art con­test this past sum­mer, which was a big suc­cess, both in terms of the en­thu­si­asm among re­searchers (83 plates were sub­mit­ted, from labs all over the world), and in the over­whelm­ing me­dia at­ten­tion that was fu­eled by the eye-catch­ing im­ages. Five judges were asked to eval­u­ate each sub­mis­sion across four cat­e­gories: cre­ativ­ity, de­sign, pre­sen­ta­tion, and ac­ces­si­bil­ity of its de­scrip­tion. As one of the judges, I can say that the task was daunt­ing, be­cause the num­ber of amaz­ing en­tries far out­num­bered the prizes of­fered. Pre­sented here are a few of my own fa­vorites, along with thoughts from the artists about their ex­pe­ri­ence with the cre­ative process and its re­la­tion­ship to sci­ence.

The Wild Gar­den of the Gut Bac­te­ria. Cre­ated by Nicola Faw­cett, Es­cherichia coli, Cit­robac­ter koseri, and Kleb­siella pneu­mo­niae, on CHRO­Ma­gar^TM ori­en­ta­tion medium.

De­spite its rep­u­ta­tion as dry, tech­ni­cal, and free from the whimsy of hu­man imag­i­na­tion, sci­ence, like art, abounds in metaphor. Like­wise, metaphor is found in the mir­ror­ing of themes be­tween the im­ages on the agar plates and the artists' re­search. Sanne West­hoff, for ex­am­ple, stud­ies bac­te­r­ial chem­i­cal war­fare – the ways in which bac­te­ria com­pete and in­hibit one another's growth. In par­tic­u­lar, she was in­trigued by the al­tru­ism of Strep­to­myces coeli­color strains that re­lease an­tibi­otics to help their neigh­bors while putting them­selves at a dis­ad­van­tage. Some of these an­tibi­otics pro­duce color, which she saw as "the col­ors of al­tru­ism." She con­ceived the idea of ca­jol­ing the bac­te­ria into form­ing the im­age of a su­per­hero, since "su­per­heroes are usu­ally fancy look­ing mu­tated peo­ple who try to pro­tect oth­ers at their own ex­pense."

Har­vest Sea­son. Cre­ated by Maria Eu­ge­nia Inda and Sac­cha­romyces cere­visiae on YPD agar; 3rd place win­ner.

Nicola Faw­cett works with mi­crobes of the hu­man gut, which form a com­plex ecosys­tem, as in Darwin's "tan­gled bank" metaphor. "It's in­creas­ingly ev­i­dent that what is im­por­tant is not one par­tic­u­lar strain or species, but a di­verse, bal­anced ecosys­tem of sym­bi­otic mi­crobes," she notes. In a healthy per­son, a dy­namic equi­lib­rium is main­tained among this mul­ti­tude. Prob­lems oc­cur when the bal­ance is up­set and one mi­crobe gains an ad­van­tage, like kudzu over­run­ning the tan­gled bank. She had watched this process oc­cur in her grand­fa­ther as he aged, as pre­vi­ously docile bac­te­ria took ad­van­tage of the shift­ing bal­ance of power to over­take "the gar­den." Want­ing to con­vey this idea with the emo­tional un­der­stand­ing that art can pro­vide, she cre­ated "Gar­den of the Gut Bac­te­ria," us­ing ac­tual gut bac­te­ria to de­pict a lovely gar­den bal­anced atop a web of con­straints that can un­ravel if any one or­gan­ism gains an un­due ad­van­tage over its neigh­bors.

The Strep­to­myces Sky. Cre­ated by Strep­to­myces coeli­color on soy flour man­ni­tol, with a lit­tle nudg­ing by Joseph Sall­men.

Maria Eu­ge­nia Inda's per­cep­tion of the yeast she was work­ing with at Cold Spring Har­bor Lab­o­ra­to­ries (CSHL) was in­flu­enced by a visit to New York City's Mu­seum of Mod­ern Art, and deep­ened by home­sick­ness for her na­tive Ar­gentina and its lush farms. She says that "com­ing from an agri­cul­tural fam­ily, the har­vest sea­son means to me a time of joy­ful­ness, work­ers unity, pro­duc­tiv­ity, goals achieve­ment" – the very qual­i­ties she en­coun­tered dur­ing her ex­pe­ri­ence at CSHL. When she turned an artist's eye on the warm spec­trum of col­ors pro­duced by her Sac­cha­romyces cere­visiae beta-carotene mu­tants, she knew just what to do with them – Har­vest Sea­son evokes Van Gogh's dreamy swirls and the warm emo­tion at­tached to a cher­ished mem­ory of home. Metaphor­i­cally, she likened the abun­dance of har­vest sea­son to the cur­rent state of yeast ge­net­ics, with its cor­nu­copia of op­por­tu­nity.

The un­in­tended theme be­hind Joseph Sallmen's work is an old one in bi­ol­ogy –the role of chance in evo­lu­tion. The Strep­to­myces Sky ap­peared on a con­trol plate that Joseph had streaked with Strep­to­myces coeli­color and treated with the an­tibi­otic spectin­o­mycin. Af­ter his ex­per­i­ment, he didn't get around to dis­card­ing the plate right away, but left it out on his bench. His Flemingesque at­ti­tude paid off, how­ever. The Strep­to­myces, un­der threat from the spectin­o­mycin, had launched its own an­tibi­otic de­fense in the form of oo­dles of acti­norhodin – an an­tibi­otic that pro­duces a lovely blue color, here sug­gest­ing the night sky, with sporu­lat­ing Strep im­i­tat­ing stars and re­flected starlight from a build­ing.
 

The Vi­o­let Louis Pas­teur. Cre­ated by Darshika Jaya­suriya and Chro­mobac­terium vi­o­laceum on Muller Hin­ton agar.

Given that sci­en­tists of­ten have a dif­fi­cult time com­mu­ni­cat­ing their re­search to non­sci­en­tist friends and fam­ily in a way that does not elicit glazed pupils or droop­ing lids, the agar artists found it par­tic­u­larly sat­is­fy­ing that their art pro­vided an ac­ces­si­ble por­tal to their re­search for their less tech­ni­cally ori­ented friends. Nicola Faw­cett pointed out that "art sticks in people's minds far bet­ter than dry words or text." Ac­cord­ing to Darshika Jara­suriya, her friends were "baf­fled and in­trigued" (and likely more than a lit­tle im­pressed, I'll add) upon see­ing her ren­di­tion of Louis Pas­teur made from Chro­mobac­terium vi­o­laceum. They took the op­por­tu­nity to learn a bit about mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy, which she found quite sat­is­fy­ing. Of course, some­times dry and tech­ni­cal is the way to go, as when a friend of Ishara Parveen found the beau­ti­ful Flow­er­ing Sun­shine so ap­peal­ing that she asked if she could eat it! Con­sid­er­ing that it was cre­ated from Es­cherichia coli and Sal­mo­nella, I'd rec­om­mend a nice flan, in­stead.

Flow­er­ing Sun­shine. Cre­ated by Ishara Parveen, Es­cherichia coli, and Sal­mo­nella, on Hek­toen en­teric agar.

Amus­ingly, the en­deavor was of­ten more like a cre­ative col­lab­o­ra­tion than the one-sided sit­u­a­tion of a re­searcher ex­am­in­ing her sub­ject. The mi­crobes are in­vis­i­ble when first streaked on the agar, and only ap­pear as the bac­te­r­ial colonies grow, so artists were never sure what the re­sults would be. Maria Inda spoke like a stage di­rec­tor when she noted that a chal­lenge in cre­at­ing Har­vest Sea­son was streak­ing the im­age then hop­ing that the Sac­cha­romyces would "un­der­stand my in­ten­tions." Nicola Faw­cett echoed the anal­ogy, grum­bling that her mi­cro­bial col­lab­o­ra­tors, "sel­dom be­have the way you want them to, stead­fastly refuse to do what you ex­pect, and cre­ate no end of in­con­ve­niences for you by their be­hav­ior." She is even in fa­vor of amend­ing the old show-biz adage to "never work with chil­dren and an­i­mals... or bac­te­ria."

As we've seen, paint­ing pic­tures with mi­crobes is more than just a quirky use of down­time in be­tween lab ex­per­i­ments. The strik­ing im­ages, the power to com­mu­ni­cate sci­ence, and a deep­ened re­la­tion­ship of re­searcher to mi­crobes are cer­tainly part of the ap­peal, but also in­trigu­ing is the in­ter­play of hu­man cre­ativ­ity and bac­te­r­ial cre­ativ­ity – which per­haps stem from the same im­pulse. In Joseph Sallmen's case, for in­stance, it's dif­fi­cult to say who the ac­tual artist was – the mi­crobes or the man! Given their pos­i­tive ex­pe­ri­ence, all of the artists fea­tured here say they plan to en­ter the con­test again next year, and some are al­ready plan­ning their pieces. I won­der, how would Flem­ing have fared against this tal­ented slate?<

 

Jamie is a post­doc­toral re­searcher in the lab of Welkin John­son at Boston Col­lege, and an As­so­ciate Blog­ger for STC.