But, did you know that bacteria and agar plates can be used to create art, too?

In the hospital’s Microbiology laboratory, samples taken from patient specimens are grown on agar plates, producing unique colonies and colours. Those culture plates are used to determine the kind of bacteria causing a patient’s infections, helping the care team select the most appropriate treatment.

Often, those colonies and colours can end up resembling art rather than a lab test. In fact, “agar art” is its own art form: for the past three years, the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) has held an agar art competition, accepting submissions from around the world.

This year, Sunnybrook laboratory technologist Linh Ngo entered that competition after finding inspiration in the Disney film Finding Nemo. “I was amazed at the similarities between the coral reef and the bacteria I work with in the lab, and I wanted to recreate that on agar plates,” she says.

Linh made the agar art in the six steps described below:

Start planning early

Linh says she first had the idea to create agar art of a coral reef last year, but missed the deadline. In November 2016, she started coming up with a concept for her submission. She also loves to draw, so she started sketching ideas. For example, Linh found inspiration for how to draw the brain coral (at the bottom of the image) in an online photo. Once she created a drawing she was satisfied, she was ready to start sketching it onto the actual agar plates.

Keep an eye out for colourful bacteria

Now that she had an idea of how she wanted the finished product to look, Linh and several of her colleagues started keeping an eye out for organisms that produced the vibrant colours she was looking for. For example, “some strains of Serratia marcescens produce a pigment called prodigiosin, which give the colonies a dark red/purple appearance, so when I finally came across a strain with that colour, I froze it for a few months,” Linh says.

Paint with a steady hand

After finding the organisms that would produce the colours she wanted, Linh used the tip of a pipette to “paint” with the bacteria on a series of five agar plates. “I had to be careful not to have any overlap of the different bacteria because if there was, it would alter the image. There was a lot of trial and error,” she says. When the original drawing she wanted to use as a guide didn’t work, she ended up painting freehand.

Be ready to experiment…

Finding the right organisms to work with was a time-consuming process. “Every time I used four to five types of bacteria on the same agar plate, the bacteria would grow into each other, and the colours and image would be ruined. So I had to figure out how to work with just two bacteria per plate,” Linh says. The colours she ended up using were derived from Serratia marcescens (purple), Staphylococcus aureus (pink, and a little green), Candida tropicalis (white) and Klebsiella pneumonia (grey, mucoid).

…and keep experimenting!

For the next step in the process, which involved putting the agar plates in an incubator, Linh also had to experiment with the incubation times. This is because different organisms are capable of lowering the pH in the medium and can cause a change in colour, especially when multiple organisms are present on the same plate. “By the time some bacteria produced the colour I was looking for, the colour of the other bacteria would have changed. It took several tries to get the timing right,” she says.

Don’t give up

In all, Linh estimates that she made about eight revisions to her original drawing, and went through dozens of test plates before perfecting her submission. Looking back, Linh says she should have given herself more time to prepare her agar art. “I had two months to make the agar art, but a few more weeks definitely would’ve been helpful. I almost ran out of time!”

Linh named her stunning image of a coral reef “Finding pneumo” (named after the movie that inspired her and one of the bacteria she used, Klebsiella pneumonia). The result far exceeded her expectations: she won second place in the ASM competition, beating out 264 submissions from 36 countries. Congratulations, Linh!

The post How it’s made: agar art appeared first on Your Health Matters.

Daphne Tully first picked up a paintbrush the year I was born. Back in 1972, she was listening to a CBC radio interview with a watercolor artist who insisted the talent can be picked up by anyone at any stage. “The only thing an artist needs to do is to work everyday for five years and be determined to do it,” recalls Daphne of the on-air conversation. “Well, I’m a very determined person!” The next day, she went out and bought a how-to book and some supplies. Her hands have resembled rainbows ever since.

The day I visited Daphne at her Toronto home, she was mixing deep blue and green paints on an ironing board set up in her kitchen, a room that serves the duel purpose of food preparation and artistic realization. A petite woman with a soft voice, she seemed totally immersed in the task at hand. And far departed from her favorite medium of watercolors, today’s painting would have even the most disinterested in art looking twice.

To imagine how truly cool her latest painting is, first picture yourself walking through the hallways of Sunnybrook (or any hospital for that matter). Now look up. What do you see? Likely a stark white and bland expanse of ceiling, adorned only with the occasional water stain. But with the wave of their magic brushes, Daphne and other volunteer artists at Sunnybrook offer patients, families and staff a little visual candy. One by one, they are transforming these utilitarian ceiling tiles into original works of art, and even recreations of paintings from artistic bigwigs like Van Gogh. Sky’s the limit (pardon the pun).

The Ceiling Tile Project started over a decade ago when a patient commented on how ugly they were to look at. It’s now evolved into a fundraising vehicle for the Sunnybrook Volunteer Association (SVA). In addition to revenue generated from plant sales, the gift shop, the beauty salon, holiday greeting card drives, coffee carts, used books sales and art shows, the $100 cost to sponsor a ceiling tile helps pad out the SVA’s 8 year, $1.5 million pledge towards capital expansion of the Emergency and Trauma Department.

The problem is, only about 70 of the ceiling tiles have been officially sponsored, leaving hundreds of these small works of art unclaimed. The SVA is urging people to consider them for birthday gifts, wedding registries and even memorials. Each sponsored tile is commemorated with the sponsor’s name on the wall below, making their contribution clear to those perusing the hallways.

Of late, the tiles have provoked some healthy interdepartmental competition. A group of 5 trauma surgeons headed up by Dr. Peter Chu, recently sponsored 36 tiles to adorn the hallway wrapping around the nursing station on C5. This last stop for recovering trauma patients now has a gallery-like feel that is truly uplifting for patients coming in. “I challenge other wards and programs to do the same for their inpatient wards!” says Dr. Chu. His colleague Dr. Homer Tien adds that a positive state of mind can help with a patient’s recovery. “Hopefully these pictures can contribute to that.”

Daphne has no doubt about the healing power associated with art. “It’s really the pleasure we can give to the patients, or the comfort we can give them, that’s what I enjoy.” It’s medicine she been benefiting from personally for over half her life, so why not spread the joy? If you’d like to do the same, visit the Sunnybrook Volunteer Association website.

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