This artwork is alive.
Each one is made from fungi and bacteria.
Ew, gross, right?
But this art is being used
to change people's minds about microorganisms.
The person credited with pioneering the art
is Alexander Fleming.
If that name sounds familiar,
it's because he's the scientist
who discovered the antibiotic properties of penicillin.
The organization behind these particular artworks
is called Petri Dish Picasso,
and it's easy to see why.
They wanted to give people more access
to the interesting world of microbiology
with a hands-on approach.
Kids, especially, get a kick out of painting
with these little things called microbes.
Here's how you paint with bacteria.
Maria Peñil Cobo: Today, I'm gonna draw a dandelion,
and those are my brushes.
Narrator: Agar is a jellylike substance
made from red seaweeds
used to culture bacteria and fungus in labs.
It's also an ingredient in foods
like gummy bears and Jell-O.
It's sterilized into a liquid
at about 250 degrees Fahrenheit,
poured into a petri dish, and left to cool and solidify.
This is the canvas and the life support for the microbiome.
A microbiome is defined as the microorganisms
in a particular environment
(including the body or a part of the body).
In separate containers, the paint,
or microbes, must be grown.
A liquid broth of water and nutrients does the trick.
A popular ingredient for making agar art is E. coli.
Each organism has different nutritional needs
and can produce different colors.
A single cell of E. coli can grow
to over several billion cells overnight.
Using a few different tools, the cultured bacteria cells
are taken from their stew and gently painted onto the agar.
Peñil Cobo: And for the flowers,
I'm gonna use a different technique with a pipette.
Narrator: It's almost like painting with invisible ink
because the cells need to grow into mature colony clusters
for you to see them.
They're put in an incubator
at their optimal growing temperature.
E. coli prefers to be grown
at about 99 degrees Fahrenheit.
Depending on how fast the microbes replicate,
the incubation step can take anywhere
from 12 hours to several days.
Then it's time to see if your agar art
is in the league of Pablo Picasso,
or maybe Jackson Pollock.
Agar art doesn't last forever.
As the cells run out of nutrients,
they will begin to die.
Some agar artists try to preserve their work
by casting it in resin, but not Petri Dish Picasso.
As they say, all good things must come to an end.