Hello Guys!
It has been quite a journey, with many obstacles and unforseen challenges, but I have produced glowing green & red bacteria art in petri dishes.
Follow this link to watch my art grow, to watch my art glow:
Here is a wordless version:
How I did it:
- Receiving a generous donation of green & red florescent bacteria from Professor Farny at the Goddard Bio Labs, I went to my home lab in Gateway Park. I took a small colony from each bacteria plate & put it in liquid LB media. I then labelled my new paint & set it to grow at 37C overnight.
Liquid Bacterial Cultures - The same day, I also mixed up & poured agar plates to grow the bacteria on. This process took 2-3 hours, as I had to heat up the agar to sterilize & gel it (autoclaved).
- The next day, I took my fully grown paint, my plates, some sterilizing ethanol (70%), wipes, and a paintbrush to a quiet lab benchtop and set to work. I sterilized my paintbrush, dipped into my liquid bacteria cultures, and very carefully ‘painted’ on the agar plate. The bacteria cultures dried on clear, so I had to line up my designs underneath each agar plate carefully.
Plate Painting Setup - I repeated this process, each day adding more bacteria to expand the image with the bacteria’s growth phase.
Painting Plates Continues - I would also package up my bacteria plates each day in a SAFE styrofoam box, and transport that to the Goddard Labs, which have a UV-Darkreader. This wonderful machine allows one to place multiple agar plates next to each other & dose them with the correct wavelength of radiation to make the florescent bacterias really glow! Here is some of my agar art illuminated:
Final Viral- The Infection has fully spread! 
Bacteria Bird *May also be a jellyfish when viewed upside down* - Sometimes, if I was working on only part of an image, I would store the other plates into the fridge to avoid unwanted growth or death of my art project.
- Finally, on the last day of growth, I created a GIF to show the growth of my art at a much faster rate.
In addition to the above art, I also created another GIF of Bacteria Bird Growing:
Thank you all for making the class projects so diverse & interesting!