When yeast creates masterpieces

circleYeast is best known for its role in producing flaky bread and foamy beer, but it can be used for a variety of purposes. Jeff BoekeA geneticist at New York University and his team are utilizing yeast as an artistic medium in the lab: Instead of pens and paintbrushes, these scientists are using genetics, genomics, and synthetic biology to transform yeast cultures into vibrant works of art.

of Yeast Art Project It began life as a serendipitous spinoff project from Professor Bork’s “Constructing a Genome” course at Johns Hopkins University over a decade ago: students learned how to construct synthetic DNA, and this educational exercise also served as the foundation for a broader project: constructing a complete genome. Synthetic Eukaryotic Genomes of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Known as Sc2.0.¹

As an aside, students have used the same technique to genetically modify yeast to produce beta-carotene, making the yeast more nutritious and changing its off-white color to shades of yellow and orange. This change in pigment inspired several of Boeke’s students to explore the artistic side of yeast.

They modified the yeast and used biopointillism to create living works of art on agar canvases: a robot placed yeast dots, or biopixels, on agar plates. Their first piece, a homage to Natty Bo, the mascot of Baltimore brewery National Bohemian, featured three colors and a resolution of 384 biopixels. This artistic direction became an unexpectedly fun side project for Boake and his team.

when Aleksandra UdzińskaAfter Boake’s lab supervisor, joined the team, she eagerly embraced the opportunity to experiment with her students to add even more color to these designs. Inspired by their enthusiasm, Boake is pursuing the project as a creative way to foster curiosity and engage the community in learning about genetic engineering and microbiology.

Sampling from nature

To expand the color palette beyond white, yellow, and orange, the researchers took an ingenious approach. Combined Yeast Golden Gate Cloning And that A multipurpose gene assembly system A technology that combines transcription units to manipulate yeast and express a target gene.^2,3 Inspired by nature’s vibrant colors, the researchers inserted a variety of genes: the bacterial pigment violacein produces green, deep purple and almost black yeast, while a gene encoding a pigment from a sea anemone produces a blue color and a gene from a coral creates a pale purple.

By adjusting the number of active genes, “we can play around with the combination of gene promoters and terminators to change the shade of a particular color,” Udzińska explains.The initial three-color palette quickly expanded to nearly 35.

Udzińska also noted the challenges of creating new colors. “We also played with the idea of ​​mixing two different yeasts, like yellow and blue, to create green,” she added, but these combinations did not produce dramatically different results. She found that using violacein-producing yeasts alone was better suited to achieving the natural greens characteristic of recreating timeless artworks.

Draw with pixels

Since Nathi Boe, Boake’s lab has drawn digital inspiration from famous artists such as Pablo Picasso and Johannes Vermeer. Recently, Udzińska has been using artificial intelligence (AI) to explore other art styles, such as street art graffiti. In this approach, an image is fed into a program that assigns a color and generates a grid of pixel instructions for the Labcyte Echo 550 liquid handler, originally designed for DNA construction.

The machine uses sound waves to launch precise 2.5-nanoliter droplets onto an inverted agar plate, creating a coloring-book-like image of up to 25,000 biopixels. The yeast-coated plates are incubated at 30 degrees Celsius for several days, after which the researchers refrigerate them to enhance color saturation and prevent overgrowth. Some of the artwork is three years old, but the images are recognizable despite being blurry.

The process of creating these yeast canvases takes a lot of trial and error to perfect. “The challenge is that some strains grow faster than others, so we’ve learned to compensate by making some colors more concentrated than others,” Boake said. But Boake believes the time and effort it takes to craft these masterpieces is a worthwhile endeavor for their working yeast.

Yeast art exhibition

As the team has incorporated more colors and intricate designs, their work has garnered recognition. Since 2016, East Art Project has won science art competitions and appeared on magazine covers. The team will also exhibit their work at the grand opening of the New York Academy of Sciences headquarters in 2023, but the fingers of curious onlookers kept defacing the ephemeral artworks. So Udzińska decided to cover them in epoxy resin to extend the artwork’s lifespan.

For Boake, yeast art is an exciting mix of science and art, and he has received funding to support education. Boake’s group sends these strains to high schools and undergraduate science programs to teach students about genetic modification through hands-on workshops. “A lot of people really respond to this work and say, ‘Oh, that’s so interesting,’ because you can make art with genetically modified yeast that produces such beautiful colors,” Boake said. He’s excited to see the project progress, and said he’s still figuring out the final design, but hopes to work on an image of 100,000 biopixels.

References

1. Richardson SM, et al. Design of a synthetic yeast genome. Science. 2017;355(6329):1040-1044.
2. Agmon N, et al. Yeast Golden Gate (yGG) S. cerevisiae Transcription Unit. ACS Synthetic Biology. 2015;4(7):853-859.
3. Mitchell LA et al. Versatile Gene Assembly System (VEGAS) S. cerevisiae. Nucleic Acid Research. 2015;43(13):6620-6630.