next, let's first enjoy some "culture dish color paintings". Among them are Mario:

colorful melons and fruits

and abstract colored lizards. ) pattern:

Our light pink short homecoming dresses are defined by astonishing colors grace . Our online shopping simply ensures to make every shopping experience here happy and easy.

painting on a petri dish is not uncommon. It has always been a favorite activity of microbiologists, including all kinds of masterpieces. However, the above petri dish paintings are fundamentally different from previous works: they are not painted, but images of bacteria after being "photosensitive", just like film.

this is a new scientific research achievement shown to the world by the Voigt Lab of MIT. E. coli growing on these petri dishes have special "photosensitive coloration" skills: they can react to red, green and blue light respectively, and produce pigments of the corresponding color after "photosensitivity". When these pigments accumulate enough, we see these color images above.

of course, ordinary Escherichia coli do not have this ability at all, and to turn them into living "color negatives" requires complex gene editing. In these color photosensitive bacteria, the researchers implanted a total of 18 genes, including the part responsible for light sensitivity, the part responsible for the production of pigments, and the part responsible for regulation. This transformation can be said to be a big project.

researchers at Voigt Lab have been conducting related research since 12 years ago. In 2005, they successfully transformed bacteria into "black-and-white negatives" on petri dishes. At that time, only four genes were introduced. Now they have achieved a much more complex function.

(this is the effect of the black-and-white version)

so, what's the use of bacterial color negatives? Not really, but it shows the new potential of biotechnology.

here, researchers have successfully manipulated bacteria with three different colors of light, and finally achieved different results (bacteria produce pigments of different colors). People may be able to allow bacteria to accomplish more complex tasks in the future. Now, bacteria are already helping humans produce drugs and the like, and in large-scale production, using light to control bacteria can be a convenient way.

but all in all, Mario on the petri dish is cute. The researchers also came up with names for these colored photosensitive bacteria: disco bacteria (disco bacteria). Do you feel the sparkling color special effects?

Source:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2131983-bacteria-engineered-to-produce-living-full-colour-photographs/

http://www.nature.com/news/light-sensitive-e-coli-paint-a-colourful-picture-1.22026