Bacteria Used to Create Nanowires

FnH writes "Derek Lovley and his colleagues of the University of Massachusetts discovered that the Geobacter bacteria is capable of producing nanowires. The bacteria is normally used to clean up toxic waste. Geobacter does not use oxygen, but metal as its source for power. This probably explains the 3nm to 5nm nanowires it excretes while working. What metal the nanowires are made of is not yet known, but the genetic code responsible for their creation is. This opens up the possibility of modifying the bacteria to create nanowires on chips."

Comments

Re:oxigen?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a correct use of a possessive apostrophe, it is not a contraction of "it is".

Re:oxigen?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the case that 'It' is a proper noun, the correct possessive form would be "It's".

Cousin It's hair is very long.

Carbon Nanotubes

[Dachannien]

Now all we need is a bacterium that can produce useful things made of carbon, such as nanotubes, consuming methane and releasing hydrogen in the process. Then we can all switch to fuel-cell based cars without all this perpetual kvetching over how to get the hydrogen.

Re:oxigen?

[Oscar_Wilde]

True, but that is a special case (and not the case earlier in this thread).

Re:Crystal Ball Hackery

[Otter]

I dunno -- certainly by the standards of wild speculation customarily appended to science stories here it's not that far-fetched. You modify the bacteria to follow some stimulus that can be applied with higher resolution than can currently be achieved with traces (light, maybe?) and let them lay down wiring.

It's no more improbable than most of the "Possible Cure For Cancer!" stuff we see here, probably on the order of modifying "Yuo have teh source code so fix it yuorself!!!" Lunix fanboys to code kernel patches.