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Microbes That Produce Miniature Electrical Wires
anukit writes "Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have discovered a tiny biological structure that is highly electrically conductive. This breakthrough helps describe how microorganisms can clean up groundwater and produce electricity from renewable resources. It may also have applications in the emerging field of nanotechnology, which develops advanced materials and devices in extremely small dimensions."
Interesting read...the first thing that came to my mind when I read this is that these organic wires may be just the thing for the interface between electronics and organic tisue. One of the major problems in cybernetics is that the chemistry of the implants tends to be poisonous to the surrounding tissue, while the chemistry of the surrounding tisue tends to be corrosive to the implant. Over time, the interface degrades and must eventually be replaced. Microbial nanowires may eliminate this problem and pave the way for permanent interfaces sooner than we thought.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I never really considered the idea that germs could eat food and use it to shit wires.
What if, through genetic engineering, we created neurones with these conductive pili?
The bits on the bus go on and off... on and off... on and off...
More than any nano-tech application (computer nanotech, that is), such a microbe that can be engineered to clean up waste water and then settle to the bottom of a lake and quietly die would be excellent in cleaning up many of our polluted lakes and streams.
Obviously it would need to be non-toxic to existing wildlife and ideally it would be able to compress and become coal or oil for future generations, but the main goal would be to clean up our messes.
With small amounts of electrical wiring as byproducts of the "biological" process of the microbe, we may even be able to "harvest" our wiring needs in much the same way we harvest seaweed or shellfish today for consumption.
This is another amazing step in our God-granted dominion and stewardship of His Creation.
This is intriguing but was is a feasible use of this?
Avarus animus nullo satiatur lucro.
"Lovley's team speculated that the pili might be miniature wires extending from the cell that would permit Geobacter to carry out its unique ability to transfer electrons outside the cell onto metals and electrodes"
concrete about the pili themselves. It would be neet to know something about their molecular structure.
Another thing about this article that hit me: genetic engineering really is going strong. I still think of it in some ways as a future technology. But their description of turning of the genes that result in the pili as well as the idea of manipulating those genes to produce pili with various characteristics really points out a high degree of sophistication in genetic engineering techniques.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
First they offered to clean up our waste water.
Then they started making wires.
Then they started selling the wires to us.
Now we need to pay to take a crap.
"Scientists don't change their minds, they just die." -- Max Planck
Another interesting implication of this research is that it suggests a mechanism for microbes to share energy in a mini-power grid. The nanowire pili of individual Geobacter often intertwine, suggesting a strategy by which Geobacter might share electricity.
Until they start calling us "ugly bags of water"
"Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"
So that's where they dump the body everytime they find (and have to quickly remove) an honest politician!
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
-I heart ubiquitous computing
I forget what 8 was for.
I can't wait to replace my old Amiga, powered by wheel-running mice, with an amoeba-powered Nokia.
--
make install -not war
I wouldn't want to live forever. Having 200 years of experience may be cool, but having a 200 year old body will definately not be cool. Now, if this technology could be used to transplant my brain into an android body, then I could see perhaps hanging around for a few hundred years.
This has some potential for the computer industry in the way of getting us closer to Moore's Law but also paves the way for increasing the amount of malleable logic in what was previously fixed silicon applications.
Of course, nanowire is pretty expensive to produce. Or it used to be...
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Good call, TMM, but I think that for optimum results, youd need to grow the organic tissue with this kinda stuff. Unless you can modify the system to incorporate the new design (adding other wires of whatever sort), it's gonna be a hack -- and I mean a real hack, with drilling, or surgery. Ick!
Kudos to the crew at Amherst, stuff like this (indirectly) helps get us off this crazy rock. I partied at Amherst once, this neat grrrl made me a smartdrink, and told me about mobile PA-type systems.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
another rainforest we rather replicate than culture
...mostly
Ice Cream has no bones.
that will shut down any developing country's tech
infrastructure by shorting out all the technology.
It sounds like a great way to return upstarts like
India or China to a agrarian state. Another use
would be self destructing electronics. Looking at
my kids 2 year old ps2 though, I guess they
already have perfected that idea.
JimD.
GeoBacter
Interesting stuff.
THINK! It's patriotic
Personally, I'd rather just keep popping my brain into clones of Utada Hikaru every few decades.
Of course, I'd spend all my time looking in the mirror.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
"Bacterial biomineralization, as it's known among the experts, has been observed in other places and for other minerals. In fact, bacterial abilities to precipitate metals from solution have been used in some very high-tech contemporary methods of treating polluted water. It's even been appreciated that some bacteria can precipitate gold. Watterson himself had found that the spore coats of another bacterial breed serve as nuclei for luring gold out of solution in broths of gold chloride."
-cp-
(It had to be said 8^D)
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
While not explicitly linked to biomimicry, the implications relate to this relatively new field. There's now a web site dedicated to dissiminating the developing ideas. My introduction came from reading Biomimicry by Janine M. Benyus. I found a copy in the central library and I think most city libraries would have a copy. It's not a rigorous read and an easy one. As the fields of molecular biology and nanotechnology grow, implementations of biomimicry will provide avenues to harness nature according to it's own rules, or, so I hope. :)
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Microbe "soup", easily refillable on pump stations, rich in electric energy, easily harvested ... at last, the final stone in the mosaic!
And to regenerate the "fuel" (refill the "batteries"), just spill it back in central waste water tank of the pump station...
I'm imagining digging through the trash at airports to find bannana peels to recharge my laptop.
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The nanowires are incredibly fine, only 3-5 nanometers in width (20,000 times finer than a human hair), but quite durable and more than a thousand times long as they are wide.
In other words, the length of these wires is 20 times finer than a human hair. They sure do work to make these numbers sound exciting!
Personally, I would look to single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) for what you describe. The real problem we have is that the body has a nasty habit of rejecting anything that isn't made by our own body. I have a feeling that these organically made wires will be no mored loved then the old fashion kind. The issue isn't organic vs inorganic, it is whether or not the body identifies the wires as not being apart of itself. We have evolved for millions of years to whack bacteria that isn't our own, so I wouldn't but the chances high that our bodies will be terribly receptive (though I would be pleased to be wrong).
There have been some mixed signals as to weather or not nanotubes are carcinogens.
The latest studies show that SWCNTs to be non-toxic and easily dealt with by the body. It isn't a green light, but it is hopeful. The real magic behind nanotubes is two fold. First, they are really small. Cells are giants compared to nanotubes. Second, nanotubes can be functionalized relatively easily, which is to say you can attach things to the surface of the nanotubes. When people talk about using nanotubes, they rarely mean those nifty little carbon chains that we all know at love. Generally, functional nanotubes have something else on the surface to specialize its purpose. For biological purposes, this means that what you see isn't necessarily what you have to work with. If these bacteria made nanowires turn out to be rejected by the human body, you are out of luck and the work stops there. With SWCNTs though, it just means you need to alter what type of molecules are hanging off of the carbon chain until you find some that the body won't attack and that don't disrupt the properties of the nanotube too bad.
Simply put... single walled carbon nanotubes are the shit, err, and the future.
"Geobacter have been used to [...] remove uranium from contaminated groundwater at a number of U.S. Department of Energy sites."
Who wants to engineer some uranium-eating bacteria, to release into weapons facilities around the world? We'll probably need some bacteria-eating fruit flies, too, to rediffuse the hot stuff back into the crust. Genome hackers, start your engines!
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make install -not war
The possibilities are boundless. There must be thousands of applications in medicine alone. All those wrecked ligaments, old fractures, and muscular scar tissue currently residing in various parts of my body...fixed and powered. No more power problems for artificial organs. Also the headaches associated with controlling and providing power to certain types of optical material/devices would be instantly sorted out. Hopefully the more invasive models designed for bio-remidiation tasks are set up with an off switch! Actually...would it be possible to use this sort of thing to fix nerves damaged by stroke or compression (i.e. extruded lumbar discs)?
"We herd sheep....we drive cattle...we LEAD people! Lead me...follow me...or get out of my way!" GEN George Patton
"... nanotechnology, which develops advanced materials and devices in extremely small dimensions."
Huh, so that's what that is!
I for one welcome our new nanobot, wire-crapping overlords.
Microwires seems more accurate to me, but I could also mesure my car in nanometers...
So we'll have the trash powered hover car after a few years... FINALLY!!
Do you think that in 200 years, you'll eventually learn to spell DEFINITELY without an A??
So if we follow this "breakthrough" and use colonies of these "lower life forms" to generate electricity to fuel our power grids, exactly how we are different from the machines in the Matrix?
When you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness. So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.
Q: Why is starting a message in the Subject line irritating?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
IANAA [I am not an anything] but it seems to me that the human body already comes with a programming language that has four unique identifiers aka DNA. I'm sure people are already exploring this but I have always seen similarities between how computers encode information {0,1 ad naseum} and the way that our bodies encodes information {Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine and Guanine}.
Personally, I do not think it's too far fetched to think that our DNA is just an elaborate programming language. Whether we're talking Assembly level or C level, who knows but once we're able to crack the genome and REALLY understand how these four "bases" [Let me reiterate, I graduated with a degree in philosophy so I'm blowing smoke out my rear atm] interact with each other it *MAY* become possible to manipulate the human body to produce these things on its own to avoid rejection. I know it's probably a long shot and there are probably an assortment of reasons why this would never work but I've always enjoyed playing with the implications of DNA being similar to a programming language and the power inherent to systems that can be manipulated at a foundational level.
"a tiny biological structure that is highly electrically conductive"
Or at least it feels that way when I see a nice picture of Angelina Jolie!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
... wire my daughter's doll house for Ethernet.
Bush should have died, not Reagan -- Morrissey
Morrissey rides a cockhorse -- The Warlock Pinchers
The Yuuzhan Vong are here!
I wonder what the heavy metal cleanup mechanism is, capillary electrophoresis? How could it be implemented in practice, by injection? Fascinating stuff.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
Given the tiny size of the "wires" their resistance must be very low if they have the efficiency implied by the article. I wonder if we could bundle them together somehow to create macro-scale superconductor cables? If not, they might provide clues on how to create such a material on the macro-scale.
I know that this isn't in keeping with the story, however, can anyone of you very cleverpeople tell me how a current switching Digital to Analogue Convertor (DAC) works please?!! many thanks!