The overhead footage depicts a strain of the gut bacterium E. coli evolving to be 1,000 times more resistant to an antibiotic in a matter of 11 days, starkly visualizing the speed with which diseases can adapt to the drugs we throw their way.

This striking demonstration plays out on a giant petri dish called the Microbial Evolution and Growth Arena plate (MEGA-plate, for short), but the researchers who designed it refuse to take credit for it. "We really did not invent the MEGA-plate. It was invented in Hollywood, of all places," says Roy Kishony, a systems biologist at the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology. "I don't know if you know this movie Contagion, but it has a billboard ad that was done for it, and it is basically a gigantic petri dish," he says.