Sciart

All sciart on this site is created by Noemie!

Hi! I’m Noémie Matthey, a scientific researcher by day and an illustrator by night. I always loved drawing and during my PhD it became obvious that I had to combine my two passions, science and art, to communicate scientific concepts to the public.

Bacteria like Desulfovibrio vulgaris produce scissors that cut the bacteria free from their biofilms.

Bacteria breaking free from home

To protect themselves from the environment, bacteria build shielding biofilms houses. But once such a house gets old, bacteria need to break out it. For that, bacteria produce special scissors that can break biofilms and set free the bacteria.

Whenever a bacterium delivers a toxin into a prey bacterium, it wants to hurt it real bad. This means, that a toxin generally targets any of the essential components of the prey bacterium to make sure there is no chance of survival.

The bacterial armoury

Bacteria developed lethal killing machines to deliver toxins into other organisms. These toxic bullets have different functions to break up essential components of the prey. Independent on what the target of the toxin is, the prey surely will not come out happy after that!

All sciart on this site is created by Noemie!

Hi! I’m Noémie Matthey, a scientific researcher by day and an illustrator by night. I always loved drawing and during my PhD it became obvious that I had to combine my two passions, science and art, to communicate scientific concepts to the public.

Learn more about the fascinating world of bacteria