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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."
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.
Other bacteria are capable of dealing with metals, even copper - lookup "acid mine drainage" and you should find a few things - bacteria which previously caused environmental problems (in simplified terms eat copper and excrete sulphuric acid - that's one mean organism!) can be used to solve others.
There's lots of odd stuff in organicly produced materials. The strangest I've heard of in the feild of metals is dislocation free iron (very strong stuff) in snails teeth (microscopic spiky bits on their tongues are teeth) in Western Australia.
GeoBacter
Interesting stuff.
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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.