. SCIENCE & TECH . Ladies and Gentlemen; Introducing the first ever Bio-Camera!

Did you ever look at a petri dish and ever wish: "Man, how sweet would it be if I could use this as photographic film!" I'm a 100% sure, many if not everyone, has dreamed of this... lol.

Blue-Green Algae

Today, thanks to advanced genetic engineer, this dream has now become a reality. A team at the University of California in San Francisco, US, headed by Chris Voigt, was able to achieve this feat by carefully inserting a gene from blue-green algae into a strain of the E. Coli bacterium. Ingeniously, the scientist decided to use E. Coli, commonly known as a food contaminant, because it doesn't normally use light for any biological processes which would interfere with there goal.

E. Coli

The protein produced by the algae's gene reacts only to red-light, which , once activated, prevents another gene from being expressed or used to make a different protein. This leads an indicator solution that is added to the bacterial colony to become black. And voila, after a 4-hour exposure to red-light, you get a crisp, one color, 100-megapixel image, like this one of the flying spaghetti monster.

Not to shaby. Now you ask: "Who on earth would want such a zany thing?" Well, no one really. The important part is that this was an exercise in advanced genetic engineering. This innovative process can one day lead to genetically engineered bacteria that construct very advanced materials guided by beams of light, which would be a dream come true for people working in nanotechnology, material science and even perhaps medicine.

You can read the full article here.