{"id":189,"date":"2008-07-31T09:37:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-31T09:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.matthewlangley.com\/blog\/?p=189"},"modified":"2008-07-31T09:37:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-31T09:37:00","slug":"art-loving-bacteria-present-a-new-way-to-clean-sculpture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matthewlangley.com\/blog\/?p=189","title":{"rendered":"Art loving bacteria? present a new way to clean sculpture&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This post is lazily reposted from Wired&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s a voracious bacterium nibbling on Italy&#8217;s priceless cultural relics \u2014 and historians are shouting, &#8220;Bravo!&#8221; Over the centuries, air pollution has formed a thin black crust on the stone surfaces of statues and buildings, and Desulfovibrio vulgaris vulgaris is being used to remove that crud in a very Italianate fashion: by eating it. Unleashed on works of art and architecture, the bacteria metabolize the sulfate in the crust, converting some of it into \u2014 oh, please excuse them \u2014 gasses. So far, microbiologist Claudia Sorlini and her team at the University of Milan have applied the biotreatment to parts of their home city&#8217;s gothic Duomo and Michelangelo&#8217;s Piet\u00e0 Rondanini. Next, Sorlini says, she&#8217;s itching to let her peckish little friends gorge themselves on Notre Dame.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/science\/discoveries\/magazine\/16-07\/st_bacteria\" target=\"_news\">Wired<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This post is lazily reposted from Wired&#8230; &#8220;There&#8217;s a voracious bacterium nibbling on Italy&#8217;s priceless cultural relics \u2014 and historians are shouting, &#8220;Bravo!&#8221; Over the centuries, air pollution has formed a thin black crust on the stone surfaces of statues and buildings, and Desulfovibrio vulgaris vulgaris is being used to remove that crud in a very Italianate fashion: by eating it. Unleashed on works of art and architecture, the bacteria metabolize the sulfate in the crust, converting some of it into \u2014 oh, please excuse them \u2014 gasses. So far, microbiologist Claudia Sorlini and her team at the University of&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/matthewlangley.com\/blog\/?p=189\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Art loving bacteria? present a new way to clean sculpture&#8230;<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[122,141,149],"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewlangley.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewlangley.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewlangley.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewlangley.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewlangley.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/matthewlangley.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewlangley.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewlangley.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewlangley.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}