katE sees red with Red Fluorescent Protein (RFP)

Single colony growth katE promoter fused to an RFP construct, day 14 using swarming plates. One of the reasons for changing the oxidative stress construct, katE, to express red fluorescence, was to align the signification of stress with cultural understanding of colours. For instance, when humans are under stress, blood flushes to the face giving it a reddish colour particularly amongst those with paler skin. Also, red can be seen as an alerting colour and has been used as ‘official’ semantics in many apparatuses such as traffic lights, where it is used as opposed to green. While these factors play little biochemical role, they may impact our understandings. A more visual reason for using Red Fluorescent Protein (RFP) is its light pink colour visible in daylight.