Science is art, and yeast can be too! Here you will find a collection of yeast art made by people in the lab (and some friends of the lab).
Sriracha BBQ sauce yeast
Jeremy Smith is winning the “finding yeast shapes in everyday spills” competition.
Gourd Yeast Box
A yeast-themed gourd box made during a lab trip to Gourdlandia.
Yeast Tattoo
A very happy yeast tattoo, modeled by lab alumna Savannah Preuss.
Frozen Yeasts
These yeasts were frozen by Taylor Germain, a student in the Fall 2022 Wine Microbiology course doing a project related to freeze-thaw tolerance.
Yeast and Crossbones
This yeast graphic was created by Ian Wayne, a student in the Fall 2022 Wine Microbiology course doing a project related to evaluating the death kinetics of wine strains after alcoholic fermentation.
Fingernail Yeasts
To make this, I used a router to cut yeast cell shapes into a piece of wood, then stained it, coated it, and painted the cells to resemble a variety of different fingernail painting styles. The fingernail inspirations are from a friend of the lab, Jennifer Abrams, the current owner of the yeast art.
Methylene Blue Yeast
Some people would have just seen it as a spill. Jeremy Smith saw art and took a photograph. Then he cleaned it up.
Halloween Yeast
Savannah Preuss created some Halloween yeast art for the season.
Gfam Colada Beer Label
The lab produced a beer with coconut and pineapple flavors, which was subsequently named “Gfam Colada.” The super chill yeast label was hand-drawn then digitally colored by a friend of the lab who continually makes exceptional yeast art: Lakshman Balaji.
2021 Gibney Lab T-shirt
Riley Sanchez had the idea for this t-shirt design, based on yeast cells fermenting juice into wine (thus the wine-colored shirt, yeast cells, and carbon dioxide bubbles). Everybody joined in to help plan the details.
Felt Catnip Yeast
This yeast cell was constructed with felt, stuffed with catnip, then sewn together. This was produced by lab friend Marina Shepelev. My cat loves it.
Yeast Limericks
Two yeast-themed submissions from a departmental limerick contest. The first was produced by lab friend Heather Scott (top). The second was produced by lab researcher Christine Sislak (bottom).
Yeast Pancake
Christine Sislak cooked some yeast-shaped pancakes!
Cement Yeasts
After getting some foundation work done at home, Pat Gibney used his thumb to add some yeast cells into the basement floor cement.
2020 Gibney Lab T-shirt
This is the first ever Gibney Lab T-shirt. Pat Gibney designed it, and the lab voted on the color scheme. This photo is not a lab member, but the shirt preview image from Custom Ink.
Yeast Birthday Cake
This was a birthday cake that Glycine Jiang made for Kayla deLeuze and Alisha Lewis. It was a chocolate and red raspberry cake with cream cheese frosting – it was delicious; note that there is even a bud scar.
Yeast-themed Birthday Card
This was the front of a birthday card made by Glycine Jiang in the lab; notice that I have been transformed into a budding yeast.
Angry Spot
This was a dilution spot gone wrong in the Summer of 2019 (a low dilution spot mixed with a high dilution spot). It was produced by Christine Sislak, a researcher in the Gibney lab. You can tell it is angry by the frowny face.
Sketch/Watercolor Yeast
This was a beautiful sketch combined with watercolor to emphasize the roles that yeast plays in the world (and in our lab). It was created by a friend of the lab, Lakshman Balaji, as part of a graduation present for students in Spring 2019.
Cross-stitch yeast
This was a cross-stitch pattern that we found on the internet. Each person in lab did some of the cross-stitching, and the final product was a graduation present for a student in the lab.
Cornell Yeast and Flower Yeast
Here is some yeast art made with a wild type yeast strain (white) and a mutant yeast strain made using CRISPR (ade2-). These were made by Marete Seymour, an undergraduate student in the Gibney lab.
Chocolate Chip Budding Yeast
Here is a representation of a budding yeast population created from delicious chocolate chip cookies. These were made by Anqi Chen, a Ph.D. student in the Gibney lab.
Yeast in the Sand
Here is a budding yeast cell traced into the beach at the Pacific Ocean near Half Moon Bay, CA… along with a classic yeast pun. This was made by Jennifer Abrams, a fellow graduate student from the Morano Lab.
Crocheted Yeast
Here is a budding yeast cell made out of yarn. This is likely the W303 laboratory strain based on the red color (W303 has a mutation in adenine biosynthesis, which results in accumulation of an intermediate metabolite, which is converted to a red pigment). This was made by Jessie Bacha, a student in the Botstein lab.
Yeast Tiles
Here are some yeast tiles I made at the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works in Bucks County, PA. If you’re ever in the area, you should visit. It is really interesting, and in addition to selling tiles and mosaics, they also offer classes to learn the old-world way of making them.
Yeast Painting
Here is a painting of a budding yeast cell I made in graduate school. You can tell it is a diploid cell due to the elongated shape and evidence of bipolar budding – note the bud scar on the outside of the cell opposite the growing bud (diploids bud from both ends, haploids only bud from one end).
Botstein Lab Logo
This is a logo that was made for the Botstein Lab during the Princeton era. It highlights both that the lab uses yeast as a research organism and the focus on systems biology (the background is intended to look like a microarray – each spot is a relative measure of mRNA abundance) Danielle Carpenter and I made this logo (with a lot of input from other lab members).
Morano Lab Logo
This is a logo I made for the Morano Lab while in graduate school. It highlights that the lab studies stress responses, specifically the heat shock response, using yeast as a research organism.
Al Capp’s Shmoo
The shmoo is a fictional comic character created by Al Capp in the late 1940s, first appearing in his comic strip Lil’ Abner (check-out the wikipedia entry for more details). In the yeast life cycle, a yeast cell that is starting to mate is called a shmoo due to its uncanny resemblance to Al Capp’s character (we didn’t make this, but it is too cool to not show on a ‘Yeast Art’ page).