High school biology teachers, take note! This story from the New York Times is a great wrap up to the year. To really appreciate the “gross” factor, your students will need to know a little cell and/or cancer biology.

Laboratory mouse stem cells are usually grown in a petri dish, constantly bathed in a nutrient broth. The cells are constantly dividing and will crowd the plate if not kept thinned out. To keep the population under control, you have to occasionally wash the plate of most of the cells, keeping a few to continue their division and maintain the population.

With the proper substrate, the cells can grow on anything, provided they are continually fed. This modern art project, on display at the MoMA in New York City, has a matrix in the shape of a small coat, with nutrients constantly feeding the cells.

Apparently, no one is there to clear off the cells and keep the population at bay:

The cells were multiplying so fast that the incubator was beginning to clog. Also, a sleeve was falling off. So after checking with the coat’s creators, a group known as SymbioticA, at the School of Anatomy & Human Biology at the University of Western Australia in Perth, she had the nutrients to the cells stopped.

I’d be interested in knowing your students reactions, especially if they bring in ethics! Is this really art?