With agar, just like in her art classes, she does not know what the end result is going to be. “There's something here for everybody because nobody knows how it's gonna turn out.

The students completed the work in phases, first developing ideas for their artwork. Some drew templates on paper for tracing, while others painted directly on the agar.

agar. art is living art. so essentially we take microorganisms like bacteria or yeast. in this case, it’s yeast and we make them have colors. the microorganisms are sustained by agar.

The American Society for Microbiology organizes an Agar Art competition, where researchers battle it out by creating artwork in a Petri dish—and these are this year’s winners. The image above ...

Last year was a banner year for agar art submissions, with more than 140 submissions. This year, there were about 75. To see this year's winner, tune into Microbiologics' social media pages or ...

The winning entry in the 2015 ASM Agar Art competition: Neurons by Mehmet Berkmen of New England Biolabs, with artist Maria Penil. The challenge was to create a piece of art using microbes as the ...