www.demoslam.com | Two microbiologists set out to create the world’s first living Google. Try it now: www.google.com

How it was done: E. coli bacteria BL21 LysS are a strain harmless to humans but very useful for growing genes for studies of cancer and AIDS. We have these bacteria in the lab containing these genes important for our experiments. We grew up a strain important for our studies for this Google Ad. What we did was the following. We placed the bacteria into 4 small test tubes containing growth medium for the bacteria. We then added a small amount of common commercially available fluids for each of the Google colors. We then grew the bacteria for four hours in the colored medium. Investigator Clayton Wright then used a sterile Q-tip to plate each of the colored E. coli onto a Petrie dish containing bacterial growth medium in agar. Agar is a starch that hardens to support growth of organisms like bacteria on a solid platform. Clayton wrote the bacteria in the Google logo style. Our concern was that the coloring would diffuse out from the bacteria and not make a coherent Google logo. After an overnight incubation. We found that that did not happen. The coloring stayed with the bacteria quite well, and the Google logo grew out very nicely. We were anticipating doing this many times to get it right, but it came out beautifully on the first try.

Eric Schmidt speaks at DLD in Munich on January 25, 2011.

Note: unfortunately, the video is scrambled for about 5 out of the first 10 seconds. We hope you’ll look past the flaw and enjoy the rest of the video.