Final art project
All that glitters may not be gold–it could be microbes!
I recently started teaching myself hand embroidery, and I thought it would be fun to use it as the medium for my final project. I was very indecisive throughout the process so I ended up making a few random things (some that are shown below). The final piece of work I created was inspired by the bacterial isolate project, specifically my own isolate. The first plate I swabbed with my environmental sample had a mixture of yellow, white, and orange bacteria. I ended up isolating a bacterium that grows in pale yellow colonies, Pseudomonas denitrificans. I didn’t have pale yellow thread, but I did have gold so I figured that was close enough. The first zig-zag streaked plate is based off my original sample culture, the second is based off my first quadrant streak, and the third is based off my final (4th) quadrant streak.
*Although my isolate technically didn’t have anything to do with gold, there is however, a type of bacteria that can detoxify gold into pure gold nanoparticles (Delftia acidovarans and Cupriavidis metallidurans, and possibly others). The process of detoxifying dissolved gold ions is a defense mechanism for these bacteria.
Other items I attempted to recreate include a T-4 bacteriophage, rRNA tree of life, E. coli bacterium, plasmids and horizontal gene transfer, a few are pictured below.
I realized in class today that I had of course forgotten to actually finish uploading my stuff to website….