Painting with yeast: An accessible microbial art activity using dehydrated Baker's yeast and low-cost supplies

Abstract: Microbial art, or ‘agar art’—the act of painting with living microorganisms on solidified growth media—is an evidence-based STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) activity for engaging students across age groups and disciplines. Because of its growing popularity, there are various microbial art protocols and commercially available kits to help instructors include this activity in their curriculum. However, despite their simplified nature, these protocols can still present challenges for adoption. This is particularly true for instructors without specialized laboratory equipment (e.g. micropipettes, scales, and autoclaves), or those unfamiliar with specific laboratory methods, such as sterile technique. Here, we provide a simplified ‘Kitchen Microbial Art’ protocol that further reduces the challenges and costs of traditional microbial art protocols. We accomplish this by replacing the use of transgenic microorganisms as paint with dehydrated Baker’s yeast, and removing the requirement for sterile technique by using commercially available pre-poured growth media in Petri plates as the canvas. One hundred-and-twenty 6^th grade students participated in this activity in a standard classroom setting, with many of them reporting the activity as engaging and fun. Ultimately, this highly simplified and low-cost protocol can make the STEAM activity of microbial art accessible to even younger and broader audiences, including those in remote learning environments.

These resources include the preprint of this manuscript and supplemental materials (one pdf document and two video files)