Sir Alexander Fleming is widely known for his serendipitous discovery of penicillin in the 1920s. The story often paints a picture of pure luck. He comes to work after vacation to discover mold on a petri dish of Staphylococcus and that the mold was preventing the bacteria from growing. A messy lab, open petri dishes and contamination isn’t usually the recommended recipe for success. However, this story may be discrediting the skills Fleming fostered through his other passion, agar art.
Sometimes the contamination was intentional
Fleming’s lab space was an art studio as much as it was a place to conduct science. Prior to his hallmark discovery, he would grow bacteria in their respective broths and spread them onto agar plates with an inoculating loop as if it were a paint brush. He would exploit the natural chromogenic properties of many species to create his palette: Bacillus prodigious for red, Bacillus violaceus for blue, Staphylococcus for yellow[1]. These methods were described in one of his own technical reports[2]. This included occasionally transferring his work from agar onto blotting paper where the dried microbes might be better preserved. Always the scientist, he monitored how well his paintings held to the test of time, taking notes on how light and the type of paper used would impact the longevity of his works.
Some of the most widely used examples of his work are recreations by Andre Maurois. They depict diverse subject matter and demonstrate the fine detail that can be accomplished using microbes as an art medium. Fleming had created stick figures, portraits, landscapes and even managed to write a legend of all the bacterial species he used onto agar. His work and notes on the process also demonstrate the knowledge and keen observational skills required to use living organisms as paint. He had to collect a variety of specimens that produced different color pigments and each of these microbes would have their own set of growth rates and growth conditions to consider. Therefore, keeping these factors in mind, multicolored and complex artworks would have to be constructed in layers, and his final vision would only be visible for a short period of time before bacterial or fungal colonies grew beyond his initial placement. Perhaps this expertise and familiarity Fleming had with microbes as an artist may have contributed to abilities as a scientist to recognize the antimicrobial properties of the Penicillium mold.
The knowledge and experience attained from creating these live paintings was also translated into microbiology techniques. Fleming painted microbes onto media to test the activity of penicillin against Staphylococcus aureus (where he first saw the antibacterial properties of the drug) and an array other pathogens[3]. This method is now known as cross-streaking and is used to study antagonism between microbial species and screen for new antibiotics.
A new era for agar art
Advances in genetic engineering have revitalized agar art. While fluorescent protein expression is a common tool in many labs today, the development of green fluorescent protein (GFP) by Roger Tsien’s lab made waves in 2008. It earned him a Nobel Prize, and his then student, Nathan Shane, drew attention when he used those fluorescent proteins to illustrate a San Diego beach. A couple of years later, a Christmas tree created by Rositsa Tashkova went viral after being shared on the American Society for Microbiology’s (ASM) Facebook page in 2014. This prompted the ASM to host an annual agar art competition and give the art form an international platform.
The contest encourages scientists and artists from around the globe to continue the practice of agar art and make use of the ever-expanding palette of colorful microbes generated in labs or found in nature. Many of this year’s recently announced winners paid homage to scientists from the fields of microbiology and beyond. Perhaps you’ll recognize some of these faces.
Sources:
[1] Maurois, André. & Hopkins, Gerard. (1959). The life of Sir Alexander Fleming : Discoverer of Penicillin. London : Jonathan Cape
[2] American Society for Microbiology’s . (n.d.). Alexander Fleming and early microbial art – american society for … American Society for Microbiology.
[3] On the Antibacterial Action of Cultures of a Penicillium, with Special Reference to their Use in the Isolation of B. influenzæ. British Journal of Experimental Pathology. 1929 Jun;10(3):226-236. PMCID: PMC2048009.