{"id":12885,"date":"2017-03-09T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2017-03-09T12:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/?p=12885"},"modified":"2017-07-12T20:35:46","modified_gmt":"2017-07-12T19:35:46","slug":"painting-with-yeast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/2017\/03\/09\/painting-with-yeast\/","title":{"rendered":"Painting with yeast"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Science magazine<\/p><\/div>\n

Today, an international research team led by Jef Boeke<\/a> of New York University Langone Medical Center and Joel Bader<\/a> at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, reported in Science<\/em> a remarkable feat \u2013 the complete de novo synthesis and redesign of five yeast chromosomes, a first step towards a completely synthetic model eukaryote. Over at Nature News<\/a><\/em>, Amy Maxmen has done an admirable job covering\u00a0that achievement, part of a project called Sc2.0. What I\u2019d like to talk about is one of the artistic flourishes used to illustrate it.<\/p>\n

In a two-page spread on pages 1038 and 1039 of the print issue, Science<\/em> offers a short introduction to the seven-paper package. In the background of that article, they present a simple rendering\u00a0of the yeast\u00a0genome, highlighting those chromosomes that the Sc2.0 team redesigned. The image is relatively low-resolution, with 16 pairs of blue and yellow wasp-waisted\u00a0chromatids on a black background. But here\u2019s the thing: the artist who created that picture used not oil and canvas as their medium, but yeast.<\/p>\n

It’s a\u00a0process called “YeastArt,” and\u00a0here\u2019s how it works<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In 2015, Boeke\u2019s team described a strategy for building biosynthetic pathways in yeast. Called VEGAS (Versatile Genetic Assembly System<\/a>), the method is kind of a cross between Gibson Assembly<\/a> and Golden Gate<\/a> cloning, and it allows researchers to synthesize biotechnologically useful molecules in yeast, an organism that is considerably more malleable than these molecules\u2019 normal sources.<\/p>\n

As a proof of principle, the team built strains expressing the plant pigment beta-carotene at different levels, producing a spectrum of colors from white to orange. They also created strains expressing the bacterial pigment violacein, which produces dark purple, almost\u00a0jet-black yeast, and fleshed out their collection with a blue pigment from sea anemone, a light purple dye from coral, and red fluorescent protein. According to Jasmine Temple, the lab technician who created the Science<\/em> image, the current palette contains 11 colors: black (dark purple), white, gray, dark orange, light orange, dark yellow, light yellow, red, pink, purple, and blue.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Boeke lab yeast color palette.
{credit}Boeke Lab{\/credit}<\/p><\/div>\n

To create a picture, the team maps each color in the image to a corresponding\u00a0strain. They then use those mappings to guide an automated acoustic liquid dispensing robot called Echo<\/a>, and \u201cprint\u201d the picture pixel by pixel by spraying nanoliter-scale inocula\u00a0of yeast \u2013 what the team call \u2018biopixels\u2019 \u2013\u00a0onto an inverted agar plate. After a couple days in the incubator to allow the colonies to grow, the plate is transferred to the cold room, where the colors develop over several weeks. The maximum resolution is 192 x 128 = 24,576 biopixels per image, Temple says.<\/p>\n

Boeke\u2019s team has used this approach \u2013 which the lab has dubbed\u00a0\u2018biopointillism<\/a>\u2019 \u2013 to create Saccharomyces<\/em>-laden\u00a0images of Gregor Mendel, a Campbell\u2019s soup can, and a smiling cat, among others; custom designs also are available. One image, capturing the New York City skyline at sunset, won FASEB\u2019s 2016 BioArt competition<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Accolades are nice, but Boeke didn\u2019t set out to be an artist. Genetic engineering, though, begat\u00a0inspiration. \u201cOnce the colors appeared, it was like, we\u2019ve got to try this,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jeffrey Perkel\u00a0<\/strong>is\u00a0Nature<\/em>‘s technology editor.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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New neuroscience tools for team science in \u2018big data\u2019 era<\/a><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, an international research team led by Jef Boeke of New York University Langone Medical Center and Joel Bader at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, reported in Science a remarkable feat \u2013 the complete de novo synthesis and redesign of five yeast chromosomes, a first step towards a completely synthetic model eukaryote. Over at Nature News, Amy Maxmen has done an admirable job covering\u00a0that achievement, part of a project called Sc2.0. What I\u2019d like to talk about is one of the artistic flourishes used to illustrate it.  Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104777,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,200],"tags":[6069465,5945961,251,6677357,75,1071],"class_list":["post-12885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-2","category-technology-2","tag-jef-boeke","tag-jeffrey-perkel","tag-synthetic-biology","tag-techblog","tag-technology","tag-yeast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104777"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}