E.Coli, E.Coli Night

In the spirit of Halloween, I felt inclined to revisit something a little bit spooky—little glow-in-the-dark stars in petri dishes. To the average human, it is apparent that these little “stars” only seem to be glowing in the top petri dish and not the bottom. Was this a mistake? Wouldn’t it be cooler if the stars in the other dish were glowing as well? Turns out the stars are actually Escherichia coli bacteria—one genetically modified to glow just like jellyfish do. Yeah, you never would have guessed.

This summer at Brown University, I got to work in a lab and perform experiments working with cutting-edge gene technology. This photo is a good mark of the commencement of my time at Brown and is a sweet reminder of the memories I have from there, from meeting people with similar interests to skipping meals because google maps wanted me to walk through buildings to find the dining hall. At Brown, my Molecular Biology class only took three hours out of my day, 12:00 to 3:00. I would get up, go to the gym, do a little work, get lunch with the one friend I managed to find at that huge college, and go to class. The first day, although very introductory as we spent time going over the basics of working in a laboratory setting, jumped right into our first experiment. The complexities of this experiment would bore you, so I won’t be nerdy and explain everything that happens at the molecular level—but if you’re interested I can recommend some good books! Essentially, the cells in the petri dish at the bottom were a control, not modified. Just the same, plain, E. Coli. The cells on top, however, had been given the same gene that makes jellyfish glow underneath the ocean. To put this gene into the E.Coli cells, the cells had to go through a heat shock to break the cell membrane and essentially insert the gene into the nucleus of the cell. As much as you’d dislike being put in temperatures up to 161 degrees Fahrenheit, the cells didn’t particularly like it either. Due to this, we needed to feed the cells nutrients and nurse them back to health so they could (hopefully!) successfully glow. I felt a little like I was a doctor, treating patients that had just undergone a pretty substantial surgery to be more like jellyfish. My patients had to stay overnight and incubate in order to recover and adopt the new gene. In turn, we had to wait. This class left me with a cliff-hanger. I was hesitant to leave the cells, the cells that after three hours of experimentation I now called mine. How my teacher saw me and how my lab partner saw me seemed to lie in the hands of these small organisms that I had put so much work into. This was the beginning of my research experience and would define the rest of my time at Brown, and maybe decide the fate of my scientific capabilities as a whole. That being said, class was over, and everyone moved on with their day. I likely participated in some form of outside game—I remember feeling particularly confident in my spike ball abilities—and then found whatever vegan meal I could after locating the dining hall. After a long night, it was finally time to return to class. I chattered with my friends before entering the room and putting on my lab coat, a silent competition brewing between us. Whose cells would glow? Finally, the professor said the words we had all been waiting for: “Now we’re going to see if your experiment was successful.” Slowly, I watched as she called up every group and made note of each and every person’s facial expression as they re-entered the room. Finally, it was our turn. My lab partner and I exchanged glances as we headed to the dark room behind our classroom to see our cells under the blinding fluorescent light. Slowly, our professor lifted the covering and checked the cells, emerging with a smile on her face. “Take a look!” Quickly, we revealed our cells, and lo and behold they glowed. I quickly snapped the above picture and immediately felt proud of my work. This was something I had only read about, only heard of in far-away prestigious laboratories with talented scientists, yet something that was now a product of my first day of experimentation. Something that was right in front of me. Peering in to see those glowing cells almost felt like I was given an opening to the future of science, one that I could be a part of too. As the week continued, my peers and I did more complex experiments, but my glowing E. Coli stayed in the back of my mind—and still does today—as my first mark in the scientific world.