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Living Photos Use Bacteria as Pixels
BrainBlogger writes "Scientists at UC San Francisco have engineered bacteria to create living photographs that weigh in at 100 megapixels per square inch. The photos were created by projecting light on "biological film" -- billions of genetically engineered E. coli growing in dishes of agar."
Obligatory Coral Cache Link
Pretty detailed tiny image of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. How many noodly appendage comments will we see?
With the growing number of sequenced microbes, we can search through nature's large trove of tools to find ones that fit the job," Levskaya said. "In our case, searching for light-sensing domains led us to use a photosynthetic bacterium." The students produced ghostlike, living photos of many things, including themselves and their advisors
I wonder how far they are from being able to take a huge image of a processor chip pathway and use these microbes to lay out an eating path for another microbe to create cheaper chips. I'm guessing it isn't realistic in the near future, but as the progression builds towards more "consistent" bacteria, maybe we'll see more aggressive use of these discoveries for profitable reasons.
That's my biggest question -- is anyone seeing private R&D scientists investing time and money in engineered bacteria that will be protected by patents or other IP protections? It's pretty amazing that TFA's discovery was by students.
That bacteria has every much of a right to life as you! Boycott anti-bacteria soap and walking!
Who do some people think they are--the pinnacle of creation, or something?
So that's what an intelligently designed life-form looks like.
Who wants to be the first to flip through my E.coli scrapbook?
To wash your hands and don't touch your face after using your camera.
Sola Deo Gloria!
Great, now you can get Montezuma's Revenge from a photo.
so now there is a new kind of dirty picture. The internet will thrive!
That picture of you will really grow on someone!
Watch as the eyes of the picture really do follow you around the room!
E. Coli never looked so beautiful!
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
E. Coli genetic engineering has been around for many years. Creating light sensitive strains, strains that make pigments, etc. is roughly appropriate for college level biology. I suppose it's kind of neat that engineers have taken notice, but it really is textbook stuff.
In fact, even more simply, since the pigment was present/absent based on whether the bacteria were growing in the light, you can repeat this experiment at home: use any organism using chlorophyll for photosynthesis and grow it in patterned light: you'll get a "photograph" in green/yellow. That's an experiment even elementary school students do.
You've got to give it to these people, though: they are excellent salespeople. Getting away with such trivialities as "engineering" and endowing bacteria with "new skills" takes both guts and skills.
Yeah, it's so life-like.
End transmission.
Complete with a photo of His Noodly Holiness.
"Mooooom, the picture of Billy is eating Billy."
AAAAAaaaaaTTTTCHHHHHHHHHHHOOOO
Hey, my 24 exposure roll of 35mm film just became 26 exposures!!
AT&ROFLMAO
For images that are essentially monochromatic, this is fine. Actually, a Russian photographer did some ingenious colour photography using monochrome film, but that was sensitive to all frequencies not just one.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Scientists have announced that they have managed to create a gigapixel per square inch "light sensor" using only silver halide molecules coated onto a transparent plastic substrate. On exposure to light, some molecules change state by dissociating into pure silver. Exposure times of just a few milliseconds were all that were needed. This image is not visible to the naked eye, but can be "developed" using chemical processing to amplify the image to make it visible. The final image can be then fixed and rendered no longer light sensitive by bleaching out the remaining halides. The image is then rendered permanent. With its vastly higher resolution than ordinary digital CCD sensors, scientists are hailing the discovery as a breakthrough for creating ultra-high resolution images. They have also speculated that by creating a sandwich of light sensitive layers and colour filters, colour images could be recorded by the same process. The only question is, is the usual digital imaging that we have all grown used to doomed by this new process?