Art and science have collided in an exhibition featuring Petri dishes painted with cultures to create microbial masterpieces.

The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Agar Art competition featured works ranging from those exploring the role of microbes in human civilisation to a fluorescent living map of the New York City street grid.

First prize went to the Berkman lab and artist Maria Penil, who collaborated to paint the work Neurons using yellow Nesterenkonia, orange Deinococcus and Sphingomonas cultures.

One of the most impressive contributions was the NYC Biome Map, created by scientists, artists and ordinary citizens at Genspace: New York City's Community Biolab.

"NYC is a melting pot of cultures — both human and microbial — and every citizen has a personalised microbiome," Genspace said in its submission.

"Collectively, we shape NYC's microbiome by our lifestyle choices, and this unseen microbial world significantly impacts us.

"The Urban Biome Map is a collaborative project between citizen scientists and artists, aiming to make the invisible visible and to raise awareness for the urban microbiome to the general public in a fun hands-on activity."

More than 50 participants helped apply bacteria engineered with colourful fluorescent proteins to Petri plates prepared with stencils of New York's street grid to assemble a map of the city.

Christine Marizzi, an educator at Genspace: New York City's Community Biolab, created this piece in collaboration with citizen scientists and artists. They collected microbes from around New York City and cultivated them around a stencil of the New York street grid. ( Supplied: Microbe World )

Maria Eugenia Inda also drew inspiration from humans' interaction with nature for her agar artwork Harvest Time, which won third prize in the competition.

She engineered a species of yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, to create variations in its colour so she could paint in a palette of reds and yellows.

"[The species] is the active agent responsible for our most basic foods — bread, wine, and beer since ancient civilizations," she said.

It was fitting then, that her picture showed a farmhouse sitting in a field of wheat.

Sarah Fader wrote on ASM's Facebook page: "One of my favourite things about great art is that it shows me the world in a way I've never seen it before!"