Photos: From E. coli to electronics

No, that?s not an attempt at a smiley face. The bacteria in the Petri dish have been engineered to glow green. The organism is question grows a precursor of artemisinin, an antimalarial drug. Artemisinin grows naturally in mangrove swamps in Asia, but is expensive to harvest. Amyris Biotechnologies hopes to develop a synthetic version of the drug out of genetically engineered bacteria over the next three years.

Photo by Amyris Biotechnologies