Bacterial Beauty

Today it was back to work, where everyone seems to be fighting off some kind of minor illness. It's possible that, as all my co-workers down their antibiotic pills, something that looks like this is taking place:








These fantastic images are bacteria in petri dishes! The color is added, but the snowflake-like patterns are actual pictures of the colonies as they struggle against antibiotics and other harsh conditions.














I found these at this website, where you can see many more beautiful images. They come from a collaboration between UCSD's National Science Foundation Frontier Center for Theoretical Biological Physics and Tel-Aviv University: two scientists (one from each institution) are studying adaptation strategies in bacteria. According to the website, each image shows tens of billions of bacteria!

I have been washing my hands today at work. A lot.