editorial illustration for “Living Materials Grown from Kombucha”
by Tzu-Chieh Tang, Synthetic Biology Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
My client (MIT research team) are developing a co-culture system of microorganism that is similar to Kombucha tea, and this system could be genetically-engineered to generate novel materials. In order to make the press release easier to read, they need a full page illustration as a hero image to explain the complex mechanism.
Inspired by the similar mechanism of Kombucha tea, I took it to symbolize this complex system. The gear-shaped Kombucha SCOBY represents its functionalities and potentials for industrial applications. Yeast workers means mechanisms are artificially controlled.
