A breathtaking application of synthetic biology
Bacterial photography is performed using a genetically modified bacteria which has been engineered to see light and respond by changing color. When millions of these bacteria are spread over a surface, they will imitate any image you shine on them, capturing a bacterial photograph. This is a groundbreaking demonstration of our ability to engineer nature to perform a distributed computation in response to the environment, and a striking example of what the future holds in the exciting new field of synthetic biology.
An exciting classroom experiment
We have created a high school kit which contains everything needed for a science class to create their own bacterial photographs. Teachers familiar with bacterial transformation kits will be at home executing our three day protocol. To create their Bactograph film students mix the bacteria into specially formulated culture media, which they then cast into film by polymerizing the media via a temperature change. To take a picture students attach a hand drawn image to the film and incubate the Bactograph. The next day students observe their own bacterial photographs and analyze their performance.
The Bactograph is a simple classroom experiment that can be conducted in under 45 minutes
The Bactograph is the brainchild of two researchers, Brian Landry and Ravi Sheth, who developed it while working in Jeff Tabor’s lab at Rice University. Jeff was part of the team that created the first bacterial photographs a decade ago, and has sought to place the experiment in the hands of young scientists ever since. In the summer of 2012, we held a hands-on AP workshop where teachers took their own bacterial photographs. After seeing their amazement at our ability to engineer bacteria, we decided we needed the next generation of scientists to share this experience. We spent the next years engineering various bacteria and experimenting with different protocols to create the Bactograph, a simple and cheap bacterial photography kit.