Molecular microbiology.
I'm investigating a small metabolic pathway (series of chemical reactions) in
Streptomyces coelicolor, which is a model organism for the genus
Streptomyces. They're a group of mainly soil bacteria that are best known (well, in certain circles anyway) for their production of antibiotics, immuno suppressants, anti tumor compounds, etc. There's quite a lot of research into them going on, mostly for this reason.
The organism is really cool but also a bit of a bitch to work with, for various reasons I won't bother you with unless you really want to. Anyway, I included a picture to show how pretty they are. They also smell like damp forest (in reality it's the other way around of course, this being a soil bacterium).
The blue droplets (and very intense blue colour in the background) are a pigment they excrete. They consist of a class of compounds that can be antibiotics, but this one is rather weak. You'd have to take so much of it you'll be mistaken for a smurf. The colour is useful though, because you can keep track of its production very easily when trying out different growth conditions or when you mess with its genome or something.
I hope that wasn't too technical..
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