
LABORATORY SERIES. No.06. The Scatalog by Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg & James King, with the University of Cambridge iGEM Team, 2009. Imagine that in 2039, you can go to the supermarket and buy a simple probiotic yoghurt for cheap, personalized disease monitoring. The yoghurt drink contains E. chromi bacteria, which establish a colony in your gut. They monitor for chemicals signals that indicate the presence of a wide range of diseases. When they detect a disease, they start start generating the corresponding color pigment, producing an easily visible output, to prompt you to see your doctor. Photo Courtesy of Åsa Johannesson.


LABORATORY SERIES. No.12. James Watt’s attic workshop. Locked and untouched after his death in 1819, the workshop was described by biographer JP Muirhead as an industrial shrine to the Steam Engineer, “where no profane hand had been allowed to violate the sanctities of the magical retreat.” Moved piece by piece from his home in Heathfield, the 20 ft x 15 ft workshop, which contains over 8,430 objects, now sits in its preserved state in the Science Museum in London. Photo: Wikipedia.