Art Projects, Page 2 Category

I can’t draw or paint, but I do enjoy crochet, so I wanted to try to do something with crochet for this project.

I wanted to attempt to crochet the cycle of cellular replication.

From left to right,1)   the initial cell with the DNA supercoiled, 2)the DNA unwound as the cell prepares for DNA replication, 3) theta replication, 4) the cell has successfully replicated and is now separating into 2 cells, 5&6) the two new daughter cells.

I tried to make cells two and three larger to show the cell growing.

This was done using acrylic yarn of two different colors.   The DNA id in a gray color, and the cells themselves are in a pink/purple color, almost like a badly decolorized Gram negative cell.

I decided to make a Gram-positive bacterium out of glycerin soap.   I wanted to make a bacterium that we are usually trying to wash away when we wash our hands because it would be ironic to wash your hands with the thing that you are trying to wash off of your hands.   Staphylococcus aureus  is a Gram-positive, coccus-shaped bacterium that is commonly found on skin and can cause infections, and the easiest way to prevent these infections is by washing your hands.   I made two pieces of soap so it would look as though the bacterium was cut in half and you could see inside of it.   I made the outer layer thick and purple to represent the thick peptidoglycan cell wall that stains purple after Gram staining.   Inside one of the halves you can see a couple plasmids, while the other half has the supercoiled DNA.   The little blue dots inside the cell represent ribosomes, and the glitter represents all the proteins and other small molecules you might find in the cytoplasm.

I also made a piece of soap to represent a Gram-negative cell envelope.   The blue layers represent the inner and outer membranes, the orange layers represent the periplasm layers, and the pink layer represents the thin peptidoglycan cell wall.   I made this layer pink because Gram-negative bacteria stain pink after Gram staining.

For my art project, I was inspired by my two nieces, Eesa and Jojo, to attempt to make a children’s book. The title of my piece, “Microbial Friends’, was intended to emphasize that not all microbes are harmful, as most children are taught. The book itself is made from pieces of cardboard and paper on which I drew the microbes. Unfortunately, it did not turn out even close to the way that I had envisioned, but it still conveys information about microbiology. Each structure of the cell is made from a different material to make it an interactive “touch and feel’ book and to integrate the functions of these structures. Furthermore, I made painfully cheesy rhymes to help myself remember the corresponding functions (it’s difficult to read the writing in the pictures so I included them below). I chose not to include a comprehensive list of functions, however, I tried to include some major ones. For example, the pili are responsible for twitching motility. In contrast, flagella allow the cell to exhibit a tumble and run method of movement and fimbriae can assist with adhesion. The glycocalyx can also be important in adhesion and can prevent dehydration. Lastly, endospores contain and protect genetic information from the cell, which is released when conditions are favorable. I also made the microbes different shapes to help me review cell morphology. For example, the green microbe is coccobacillus, the red is coccus, the blue is irregular and the purple and grey are bacillus.

Rhymes:

Feel the sticky fimbriae, numerous and short. They are important for adhesion, and can make a biofilm fort!

Feel the glycocalyx, shiny and silky smooth. It prevents dehydration, and acts similar to glue!

Feel the twisty flagella, extra long and thin. They help the cell move, as it tumbles and runs again!

Feel the pokey pili, long and sticking out. They use twitching motility, to help the cell on its route!

Feel the bumpy endospore, round and in a heap. It protects the information, when the cell goes to sleep!

During class when we talked about cell walls, it reminded me of a fence or a wall on a farm, you keep all the things you want in and all the bad things stay out. So for my project I drew a fence through a field and then drew the “good guy’ characters on one side on a happy and healthy land, and then the “bad characters’ on the other side in an unpleasant, desolate desert.

The fence is there to represent a cell wall, Gram -positive or negative, and the characters represent different processes of the cell, for example Dexter is the brains for DNA replication and the other characters do the heavy lifting of creating proteins like a ribosome. The bad characters reminded me of some of the “bad guys’ they might encounter on the outside, like Man Ray using force to try to break the cell or Mojo Jojo is the brains and tries to insert his bad DNA into the cell but their efforts are futile with the fence/cell wall in the way. I also thought the openness of the fence would allow for diffusion of small helpful “ions’ in and out.

The different kinds of microbes floating around in the sky are just there to confirm that this is a project about microbes.

I have a love of drawing the cartoon characters of my childhood so this project was a really fun one to try my hand at painting on a canvas for the first time.

by: Michael Carpenter and Ana Strachan

For our project, we decided to build a bacteriophage to help us study for the final exam. Using repurposed items (mostly) around our houses we constructed this large bacteriophage. A bacteriophage is a virus that infects bacteria. The structures which we depicted are the capsid which protects the nucleic acids seen inside of it which can be DNA or RNA. A collar helped to support the capsid. The tail which allows the nucleic acid to pass through during infection of a host. Attached to the baseplate at the bottom of the tail are the tail fibers have chemical receptors to help find and attach to a potential host. The baseplate contains components that forms a more permanent bond to the host. Once the bacteriophage is secured to the host the sheath around the tail contracts helping to break into the envelope.