Bacteria as “ink” for writing the initials of names on agar

  Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.349v4
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Microbiology, Science and Medical Education
Keywords
surface patterning, violacein, Chromobacterium violaceum, swarming motility, solid medium, cell spreading, inoculation loop, pigment diffusivity, education research, color contrast
Copyright
© 2016 Ng
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Ng W. 2016. Bacteria as “ink” for writing the initials of names on agar. PeerJ Preprints 4:e349v4

Abstract

Mementos encapsulate memories and serve as triggers for their recollections. By using a purple pigment producing bacterium as “ink” for writing on agar, a picture memento depicting the initials of students’ names was created to help them recollect, in future, the strong friendships that they fostered during their final year research projects. Besides the fun activity of “Bacterial calligraphy”, the surface patterning technique can also serve as a simple and relatively low cost tool for testing the feasibility of research ideas; for example, depositing cells in both straight and curvilinear lines on planar substrates may find use in understanding possible interactions between different microorganism species. A synopsis of the work and a structured abstract can be found in the accompanying PDF file, while the original article, “Bacterial Calligraphy: A Memento for Undergraduate Research Students”, is available in the Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 172-174 as an open access article, URL http://www.asmscience.org/content/journal/jmbe/10.1128/jmbe.v13i2.414 .

Author Comment

Language and logic were improved in this version.