The dish is dead, long live the dish!

The problem with Petri dishes – and this hardly needs saying really – is that they just don’t resemble 1980’s computer gaming classic Pac-Man closely enough.

Sure, it’s been said a million times over, but at long last it looks as though this is a problem soon to be confined to the annals of scientific past. How foolish we will all feel when microbiologists of the future look back on the simple-minded blandness of our current cell-culture offerings. “Look at those poor saps,” they’ll undoubtedly say. “Peering at banal, un-representative circular dishes full of micro-fauna like so many Neanderthals wildly swinging stone axes.”

And they’ll be right. A 2D disc of agar? In what way, exactly, is that representative of a microorganism’s natural environment? Yes, yes – we’ll grant that the growing field of 3D cell-culture has made great strides in mimicking the in-vivo environment; the one in which microorganisms actually live. Incredible feats of hydrogel based microbiology, for example, have provided real insight into how bacteria actually function. The problem is, tech like this hasn’t really challenged the old-school 2D Petri dish’s place at the heart of the lab. Nothing less than a full on revolution is going to chip this perennial staple from the world’s lab benches.

Every revolution needs a pin-up – a Che Guevara character to focus the revolt – and this one has its own in the understated form of Norwegian microbiologist, Professor Erik Andrew Johannessen. And he’ll need all his subversive guile for this gig; just how do you stage a coup against the Petri dish – an icon of the very field it is used in? Well, one idol can only be taken down with another; and what better icon to repurpose than the pixelated, neon smile-fest of Pac-Man? And so it is that we are sitting at the Science Lite desk watching a video of Johannessen’s latest experiment where single-celled ciliates are being hunted by multicellular rotifers. A micro-drama being played out on the legendary labyrinth from Pac-Man – which has been recreated with a diameter of under a millimeter, and filled with a nutrient rich fluid.

Not content with just the functional aspects of this – Johannessen also utilised his fellow mutineer and film maker Adam Bartley who used neon lighting to really stage the whole thing like the famous computer game. But other than being a stunning example of scientific outreach (this video currently has nearly half-a million views on YouTube), can there possibly be a serious side to this? You bet your suspiciously calloused, videogame-playing thumbs there is. By forcing these micro-beasts to negotiate a complex 3D maze, they are allowed to exhibit a more natural behaviour says Johannessen. What’s more, by tracing their movements he also hopes to detect the faint yet pungent signals of logic in their behaviour. Real, tangible microbiological benefits are at stake here then – so what of the pop-cultural inspiration?

Embrace your inner pixels we say. Embrace them and Vive la revolution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvZm9EXqrdU