This artistic representation of the artist’s love for his home country was made by spreading a single-celled photosynthetic bacterium called Synechococcus elongatus on a plate containing just water and some salt. These bacteria, belonging to a larger phylum of bacteria called cyanobacteria, grow by photosynthesis using little more than sunlight and CO2 and some researchers hope they can be used to produce biofuels and other compounds in a carbon-neutral way.
For a little more information on cyanobacteria and biofuels take a look at these great Signal to Noise articles:
Mimicking fossil fuels through metabolic engineering
For some general information on cyanobacteria, check out their Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Art contributed by Nick Brouwers