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Microbes That Produce Miniature Electrical Wires

Posted by samzenpus on from the nano-doozers dept.

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."

3 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Like super-algae by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A similar process was developed for removing radioactive waste from water. A type of bacteria acts like a room ionizer and removes the particles boyance. The radioactive material settles to the bottom of the tank and allowing it to be safely collected.

    Another possible option could be in removing heavy metals from the water not only for toxic polution reasons but to harvest metals. The best way to get industry to clean up after themselves is to give them a way to make it profitable. They don't want to throw away sellable metals but they aren't usually profitable to extract. Bacteria that leaves a metalic residue whether from excreting it or from the dead bacteria itself would be a cheap way of extracting the metals from waste water.

  2. Re:Possible cyberjack material? by Gactaculon · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Yeah, microbial nanowires must be the solution, because it's not like the human body has a thing for attacking foriegn cells, especially bacteria, right? Sorry to be sarcastic, but this doesnt seem to me to get anybody any closer to solving that particular problem. Better progress would probably be had in researching truly biologically-neutral conductors than in a elaborate scheme to get microbial nanowires to evade the human immune system. Besides, it doesn't even seem to be known that the conductive structure of these organisms is non-toxic to human cells, anyway. Not every biologically manufactured chemical is benign in every biological system, you know...

    This development is all sorts of interesting, but for this particular application? I'm just not seeing the basis for enthusiasm.

  3. The length of these wires by rpcxdr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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!