Menzies Art Gallery of Scientific Discovery
Ornithobacterium hominis
Year: 2022
Medium: Acrylic on canvas, digital image
This painting represents the discovery of the new bacterium, Ornithobacterium hominis, by researchers at Menzies School of Health Research.
The middle of the image shows an agar plate growing the bacterium. The shapes around the agar plate signify the people of the scientific community involved in the discovery with the six largest shapes representing the scientists at Menzies: Katrina Lawrence, Tegan Harris, Rick Hall, Heidi Smith-Vaughan, Anne Chang, and Robyn Marsh.
The orange dots surrounding the people is the colour for Menzies. Spreading from either side of the agar plate is the knowledge passed on to the greater community. The background of the painting represents the bacillus pink Gram-negative stain as seen under the microscope. The negative space in the bottom left is a bird feather, representing the bacterium’s only known relative, the bird respiratory pathogen Ornithobacterium rhinotracheale.
(Artwork owned by Menzies School of Health Research)
About the bacterium
This novel species of bacteria was discovered during a study of the upper respiratory tract microbiota of young children living in a refugee camp in Thailand. Ornithobacterium hominis was found to persistently colonise almost half of samples collected from patients at one year of age, and researchers identified the presence of antibiotic resistance genes.
After this new species was described in a 2019 research paper, Menzies scientists set out to identify the conditions necessary to grow this microbe within a laboratory environment to enable further research. After encountering various challenges they successfully identified the ideal conditions to culture the bacterium.