Telus Spark

Bacterial Art

This year we continued our collaboration with Telus Spark, Calgary’s science centre. We were invited to run an event at their monthly adult night, where adults come to the science centre after hours to participate in science activities. Alongside DIY blood typing and glow in the dark paint, we ran ‘Bacterial Art’. Using bacteria expressing six different fluorescent proteins, participants got to create their own agar plate masterpieces while we explained how we can modify bacteria to express different genes. This sparked some interesting discussions on people's perceptions of E. coli. People generally knew that E. coli made you sick and was often associated with contaminated meat, but didn't know much more about it. Most participants were surprised to know that not all E. coli is dangerous and even more so that we were using non-harmful E. coli to build our pathogenic E. coli detector. People were also very interested in the idea of 'glowing bacteria' and the kind of applications they could be used for.

It was great to step out of the lab for a bit and see what the general public thinks about E. coli contamination and the potential for our product. After the event, we incubated the 'artwork' overnight and then posted pictures of the plates on the Telus Spark Facebook page so that participants could check out their masterpieces. Below you can see some examples but check out the Facebook page to see them all!