In Living Color: Microbes Make Tomorrow’s Ink
10th February 2016
Throughout the fall of 2012, Marie-Sarah Adenis and Thomas Landrain toiled in La Paillasse biohacker space and their apartment on the outskirts Paris, trying to coax bacteria to bleed blue. They scoured more than 200 research papers and spent days growing colonies in their home incubator.
Shortly before Christmas, they settled on a Streptomyces soil bacteria originally discovered in 1908 on a potato plug that has become famous for its antibiotic properties. The bacteria also produces a beautiful, deep blue. Before long, Adenis, a designer, and Landrain, a biologist, had siphoned off their first drop of bacterial ink.