Image created as a logo for Artificial Life XI: The Eleventh International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems (http://alifexi.alife.org/)

From the introduction to the Proceedings:

“We chose to promote the conference with an image that is in some sense itself an example of artificial life: a real organism artificially encouraged to adopt the shape of the host country (plus Ireland). The cover of this proceedings volume features a photograph of a single-cell creature, the slime mould Physarum polycephalum, that was grown over a period of between twelve and twenty-four hours in a petri dish. While we have tidied the image up a little, it is essentially undoctored. The slime mould was grown by Soichiro Tsuda, and photographed by Soichiro, Nic Geard and Seth Bullock. The initial idea was proposed by Richard Watson during a particularly creative lunch.

In order to achieve the shot, we used a piece of acetate with an appropriately shaped hole as a template, and grew the slime mould across this area. The network of microtubules that you can see forms spontaneously as the creature grows, and reflects the self-organised system of nutrient transport that the slime mould uses. Since Physarum does not enjoy acetate as a habitat, it is relatively easy to remove the template and leave behind the organism, which has adapted to the niche it was offered by creating a living map of the the United Kingdom (and Ireland).”

This post was submitted by Nicholas Geard.

The first two images show the changes that occur when E. coli O157:H7 strains are exposed to sublethal concentrations of the antibiotic ciprofloxacin. Ciprofloxacin induces cell elongation, also called filamentation. In addition, the cipro causes the bacteria to become more “sticky” and they line up forming interesting patterns, almost woven like a textile. Bacteria were stained with acridine orange stain and photographed by fluorescence at 1000 X magnification.

The third image shows EHEC secreted proteins that formed into rope-like structures as the sample dried out slowly under the cover slip. An artifact turned into art work!

This post was submitted by John K. Crane, MD, PhD.