Living Ornaments: Grow & Paint with Fluorescent Bacteria

In this festive, hands-on workshop, you’ll combine science, art, and holiday spirit by transforming E. coli bacteria to express green (GFP) and red (RFP) fluorescent proteins.

Then use those glowing microbes as "paint" to design your own custom holiday ornament.

We’ll walk you through bacterial transformations, teach you how to analyze your glowing results under UV light, and let your creativity run wild as you “draw” with your living microbes on agar-coated ornaments.

In this workshop, you will:

• Perform a bacterial transformation using GFP and RFP
• Analyze glowing bacterial colonies under UV light
• Use your transformed microbes to design a glowing ornament
• Take home a one-of-a-kind holiday keepsake

Serena Wessely is the Lab Manager at Genspace, the world’s first community biology lab. With a background in biochemistry, she holds a B.S. and M.Sc. from Johns Hopkins University. Her research there focused on CRISPR knock-out techniques to study the biosynthetic pathway of Dynemicin A.

At Genspace, she oversees lab operations and the membership program. She manages equipment, develops experimental protocols, and fosters interdisciplinary collaboration. She also provides scientific support across Genspace’s programs, including community-led research, artist residencies, workforce development, and classes.

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Host or Publisher Genspace NYC