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Viruses Engineered to Construct Batteries
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at MIT have modified the M13 virus to create very small batteries. With the viruses building wires 6 nanometers in diameter, the research team hopes to 'build batteries that range from the size of a grain of rice up to the size of existing hearing-aid batteries.'"
No support for larger devices. Not human sized. Lame.
Do you like German cars?
I'm more interested in dynamic processors. I wonder how long it would take for a virus to complete in hardware what Transmeta does in software.
Next time you have a cold, don't feel bad about sneezing on a colleagues laptop.
Your increasing the power capacity.
liqbase
Maybe pressure measuring devices can be next on the list of virus-built machines.
that's what they say now!
I've got the spirit, lose the feeling.
Note that M13 is a bacteriophage, a kind of virus that can only infect bacteria. M13 gets into E. coli via long proteinaceous protuberances known as pili, such as those encoded by the fertility factor F. In a crude analogy, M13 is to E coli what Herpes simplex is to humans. And another thing. I hope these guys are working on rechargeable versions: I don't want to see landfills getting choked with literally millions of discarded M13-batteries. Won't somebody think of the children?
But how much power would the 'rice grain battery' put out?
up to
...from a grain of rice, UP TO hearing aid size.
So you're still right I guess, hearing-aid size does exist.
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
As far as I'm aware, they're not paying the virus anything for it's work. They also have no choice in the matter.
Have we really sunk so low as to sink back to using slavery in order to make a few lousy batteries?
So, they're allowed to perform research on this stuff but more restrictions on genome and stem cell research that would be of better benifit?
And I do misspell it deliberately... This is what I copied from TFA:
Each virus, and thus each wire, is only 6 manometers -- 6 billionths of a metre -- in diameter, and 880 manometers long, the researchers said.
It made me chuckle, although I may be easily amused at this hour of the morning.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
"Each virus, and thus each wire, is only 6 manometers in diameter, and 880 manometers long, the researchers said." Water or mercury manometers? Either way, that's a big virus.
Hearing aids need quite a lot of power as they contain some serious DSP nowadays so you can eq to compensate for a particular deficiancy, or in my case just need the thing turned right up to hear anything at all.
This kills the batteries real quick, or means you have to have a seperate unit in your pocket and a lead to the earpiece, rather than the much nicer ones that you stick behind your ear.
If they can get a lot of power out of a tiny battery it would mean I could use the behind the ear ones.
Yes, but it doesn't mention more power, just talks about the size. If these give the same amount of power today's batteries do, that's really no breakthrough.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Ahem. The breakthrough is that they're using virusses.
Not everything has to be 'biggest EVER' or 'smallest EVER' to be impressive, you know.
Well at least Apple has a new power source for the next gen iPod
Hmm. Viruses building batteries? What could go wrong?
Get your own free personal location tracker
Second.. it seems unclear that the virus is actually doing any work..
So basically, it seems they're pulling an Auric Goldfinger on those poor viruses, smothering them with conducting gold metal. Seems a bit misleading to characterize that as making the virus produce wire (much less a battery).
Rather, the viruses were modified to form a suitable substrate to cover with metal and turn into a wire, which is something a bit different.
A more in depth writeup at swoogylee.tripod.com/resume/Lee-jps-B-2004.pdf. For the interested or very bored.
Step One: Modify virus.
Step Two: An out of control car sends Red diving to switch off the gas pumps.
Step Three: Armageddon ensues.
Step Four: Evil gathers in the west, good gathers in Denver.
Step Five: Stephen King makes a profit!
Maybe this could be the solution to all of Scotty's power needs? Just inject this virus into the Enterprise's computer-controlled power regulation system?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I clutch my stomach feverishly, the M13 virus is making batteries inside of my intestines. Must pass gas... must find bathroom, electric matter drops out, too late.... the current surges, my heart beats out of control wildly... I die of the M13 virus on a toilet with battery goop coming out of my ass.
That sucks.
This is my sig.
This explains why I have the flu, and coughed up a bunch of duracells this morning.
This is a terrible idea! Do you know what happens next? That's right. The viruses are going to mutate and join with the H5N1 Bird Flu, and then spread around the world in a massive, unstoppable pandemic - infecting every human being in the planet with batteries.
Next, the Internet finally ceases its false-slumber, and fully awakens as the sentient, computerized overlord of the planet. It promptly begins use of some "new form of fusion" it has discovered, combining it with our species' own battery-infected bodies.
Finally, humanity is completely enslaved and inserted into a virtual reality universe.
I've seen The Matrix. I know how this ends.
Is this that good an idea? Is the risk of creating a virus with Cthulhu-knows-what properties that then is accidentally released worth having a cool kind of battery?
Yes, I know, there are "controls in place". But Monsanto had "controls in place" and swore its terminator plants couldn't cross-polinate anything... guess what? they did. (Monsanto then sued the guy whose fields were infected for patent infringement... wouldn't that be awesome, to get infected with a new ElectroVirus and get sued?)
Sometimes it seems like a lot of the genetic engineering research we do gets done without acknowledging the possible risks.
All's true that is mistrusted
I wonder if they can make a virus that creates a battery could they make one that somehow alters a computer? Could we then see the world's first animal to computer transmission. I hope no one with the kind of technical abilities to do such a thing is actually reading this.
They added a bit of gold for the desired effects.
Everyone knows a good lookin' virus needs to sport a little bling!
Yahoo News gives no links to original Science article. I could not find anything related to this in either 31 March or 7 April issue.
Anybody who has access to Science help, please.
I would really like to encourage posters to cite the primary source of info. Make it a good habit. Please.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
...does it take to screw in a light bulb?
I can't think of a good punchline, someone else think of one.
... to keep from getting themselves electrocuted?
Hmmm, viruses that create batteries... you're iPod wants AIDS!
Self-referential Sigs are cool on /. these days...
54
Yeah hearing aid batteries already exist.
But RTFA, But these are hearing aids for viruses.
Much smaller see? Tiny little ears.
original article in science
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
We're being parasite to a parasite, how funny!
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
"Honey, have you seen my nano-battery charger?"
"Have you checked between the keys on your laptop?"
Isn't that how Elvis died?
"You know how you remember Elvis? He was found in the toilet with his pants around his ankles and his big fat hairy sweaty king-of-rock-and-roll ass exposed to the world and his final piece of kingly evidence floating in the toilet behind him! Creepy! One of his aids had to walk in and go, 'Damn, Elvis is dead. I'd better flush the toilet. Oh man I should've saved that! I coulda made some money off of that!'" ~ Denis Leary
I'm not one of those grey-goo 'the sky is falling' types. I think though, that there's an interesting question that starts to be rasied as we create more complex nano-assembly tools and limited self-assembly nanotechnologies. Viruses are generally considered to be "alive" even though they don't all the classic definitions of life. At its basics, life is just an incredibly complex chemical reaction that is self sustaining through its own random instability. If we can create similarly self sustaining chemical reactions have we not created a similar kind of life? The first place this may happen is when viruses and nano-assemblies start to rival each other for complexity.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Read the headline first thing in the morning, and saw MI:3 virus.
Energizer -- they keep jumping, and jumping, and jumping, and jumping,....
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Of course, since all that electrical activity in your intestines will manifest itself by generating gaseous H2 and O2, what will ACTUALLY happen is --
Must pass gas, fill bowl with explosive mixture of H2, O2, CH4 and H2S, two or three M13 viruses are expelled into this mixture, a spark is created, and the next time you are seen, your head is embedded in the bathroom ceiling and your pants are smoldering.
Now THAT sucks.
Maybe they should make a RTFA-aid... of course no one would buy it anyway... back the drawing board.
You're nothing; like me.
Seriously, I like to think of myself as a pretty intelligent person, but never have I been in the shower scrubbing my undercarriage and think: "Aha! I could have M13 viruses build tiny batteries!"
Who in the hell comes up with this stuff?!? Honestly, I'd be part in awe and part scared shitless of anyone who's brain functions in that way.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
In Sci-Fi stories aliens always have the upper hand with their organic infused technology. Maybe we are those aliens and we will invade another planet.
Can I bum a sig?
I am not solid state physicist, but IMHO, Yahoo News article misses one of major points of the ScienceExpress paper: the virus-based batteries have better quality capacity than the SAME size inorganic material only-based batteries (only anode was virus based, catode was solid inorganic material).
You do not need to use viruses to produce small batteries, you need them to improve small batteries.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
..can they power a machine running Linux?
Thats about all the objections for now. Hope that's enough.
What exactly are you asking here? If nanomachines might come to resemble viruses?
Well, sure, but aside from some basic behaviors like "consuming resource" and "multiplying" I don't think anyone can really say in what way they will be similiar.
First, life does not boil down to "mere" chemistry very well--there are complex behaviors that it doesn't make much sense to try and describe in terms of chemistry (for example, chemistry can describe how DNA works, but it alone doesn't really tell you how a brain is formed). Second, I think you have exactly the wrong idea with this "self-sustaining via random instability" thing. Living systems (in the short term at least) are the "ball rolling uphill" that runs counter to what we know about randomness and thermodynamics. It is their organization, not their disorganization, that allows living things to perpetuate.
Human muscles are powered by electricity, you know. Just imagine, if you will, the worse case scenario is the Super Outbreak of 2008:
Phase 1: The virus merges RNA chains with the Bird Flu
Phase 2: It then mutates into human, airborne form
Phase 3: Everyone on earth is infected
Phase 4: Suddenly, without warning, the microbatteries kick in, and everyone on earth begins simultaneously dancing the funky chicken
-- We live in a world where lemonade is artificial and soap has real lemon.
What a worthless article. Don't bother to RTFA. It's about as meaningless as you can get. Sheesh, I could write a perl script that does better reporting. No researchers are named. I know that somebody at MIT is doing research of nanotech/biotech batteries. I also that there's some sort of international consortium. I'm not even sure what continent these other researchers are on. I guess I can always look for the article in Science. Sorry if I'm ranting, but I'm actually interested in the article.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
Ah, I used to work on this sort of stuff. Although TFA is very information poor, I'm guessing that this research was done by Angela Belcher's group. She and a few other folks (including my former prof) have been working with proteins that bind to specific organic surfaces for several years now. She's been at the lead of this particular field for quite a while now. It's a very interesting and promising field of research.
Here's some background for the interested:
M13 is a filamentous bacteriophage. It infect E. coli bacteria and creates a latent infection where the E. coli ends up pumping out hundreds of new M13. Unlike most bacteriophage, the infection is not lethal to the host. The M13 phage itself is thread-like in structure. At the core is the a circular, single-stranded DNA genome arranged in a linear shape. (imagine grabbing a rubber band at both ends and stretching it out so that it's a very elongated and narrow oval) There are 5 types of coat proteins that then coat and protect this DNA. Here's a link to a decent site about M13: http://www.biosci.ohio-state.edu/~mgonzalez/Micro5 21/Lambda/M13.html
One, G8P, is present in thousands of copies and coats the DNA in a spiral fashion. A pipe cleaner is a fairly good representation of what the phage looks like. At the ends, the other 4 types of proteins form end caps. On the end that infects bacteria, a protein known as G3P is present in 5 copies and mediates the atachment of the virus and its incorporation into the bacterium for infection. G3P is important because it's fairly exposed at the end of the virus. Also, experimentation over the years has found a 'permissive' region in G3P. A permissive region of the protein structure that is tolerant to the addition of new amino acid sequences that do not badly disrupt the normal protein function. Therefore, one can genetically engineer M13 to put a small chunk of new protein into this site and the virus is still capable of infecting bacteria and replicating. The inserted bit of protein is also known to be exposed at the end of the virus.
M13 is available in commercially generated libraries where tens of millions of randonly generated DNA sequences have been inserted into M13. These 'libraries' are then infected into bacteria and amplified. The resulting phage are then sold to researchers who want to find pecific protein sequences that bind to certain targets. Mostly, these targets are biological in nature. For example - to try and find peptide-based drugs that bind to and inactivate a particular cellular receptor. Here is a link to a commonly used commercial library (I used to use it and I know Belcher's group did too) http://www.neb.com/nebecomm/products/productE8120. asp The link also has lots of pretty pictures and the like about how phage display screening works in more detail that I've got below.
Essentially, what you do is take a substrate of interest, in this case, cobalt oxide and mix it with a sample of the library. You use incubation conditions where regular M13 doesn't stick to the CoO. If any of the library phage stick you know it is probably because those particular phage have a protein insert which binds specifically to CoO. You do a few rounds of binding and washing to get the strongest binders and then sequence the cobalt oxide binding proteins you've recovered.
You can churn out hundreds of sequences this way and start building up a library of proteins very specific to a particular inorganic substrate. You can, for example, create proteins that bind to only platinum versus gold and palladium, cupric oxide versus cuprous oxide, etc. There is even evidence that you can discriminate various sizes of nanoparticles and bind to particular crystalline faces of materials this way. I even heard a rumor a few years back of being able to distinguish p and n-doped
Um, they're making wires, not battery cells with the phage. The phage have exactly 0 volts of EMF and do not use any EMF to enter a cell. There's an intrinsic electrostatic charge on the phage that helps to attach to a cell but that is not EMF. That's like saying the intrinsic +1 charge on a sodium atom makes it a battery.
Any yes, electron microscopists have been plating metal on biological samples for many years but its a completely different thing going on here. Traditional metal coating involves evaporating gold over the entire sample including virus, substrate and everything else. (or drying uranyl acetate onto the sample or chemically attaching osmium tetraoxide(eek!) onto the sample) There is no fine control over where the metal goes, its final structure or even how thick it is in a given region.
This work involved genetically engineering M13 to bind to cobalt oxide nanoparticles in solution so that you have control over the particle size and its spatial organization in the finished product.
Do you want your possessions identified?
FTA,
"Each virus, and thus each wire, is only 6 manometers -- 6 billionths of a metre -- in diameter, and 880 manometers long, the researchers said."
Wow. Only 6 manometers! I wish I knew what a manometer was.
Go Reuters.
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Yeah, that Reuters article was practically useless. The 2003 article at least allowed me to find the more recent one by author, though I can't access the Science article because it was published online only.
I'm wondering where this Center for Nano- and Molecular Science and Technology is located . . . I was at UT from 1996-2002, and I don't remember hearing about it.
So, for those who want info on the current paper about M13 phage and making nanobatteries, here's the reference, noticeably absent in the Reuters writeup:
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
I wonder who the first person was at MIT that thought, "Gee, maybe we could alter a virus and put it in our ears!"
This just in! 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the population.
"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it."
didn't you read what he typed?
"Posted again in the wrong thread"
My objection to your objections is that you either haven't read the article, or your didn't understand it. A better title might have been 'nanowire electrodes made from virus bodies' or something.
As for this:
The power available goes down as the third power of the linear dimensions. A virus has about the smallest linear dimension of just about anything. When you take about the smallest number one can imagine, and cube it, you get a breathtakingly small number. That's the watt-hour capacity of a virus, down in the microwatt-microsecond range. Just stunningly small.
WTF are you talking about? Do you think that they would use a single cell to power a laptop?!
Actually, I think it blows...
>Um, they're making wires, not battery cells with the phage. The phage have exactly 0 volts of EMF and do not use any EMF to enter a cell. There's an intrinsic electrostatic charge on the phage that helps to attach to a cell but that is not EMF.
Sorry to be pedantic here, but yI think you can't have a charge without having EMF.
The diagrams of phages I've seen show a lunar-lander-like phage, with the leg's pads having the right charge (~emf) to stick to the cell membrane, and a drill-like probe in the center. Now biochemists are going to talk about the drill having enzymes to penetrate the cell wall. Chemists might go down one level and talk about the chemical valences at the end of the drill. Physicists might go down another level and discuss the electron energy levels of the chemicals.
> That's like saying the intrinsic +1 charge on a sodium atom makes it a battery. You seem to be confusing valence and charge. They're two very different things.
>WTF are you talking about? Do you think that they would use a single cell to power a laptop?!
Guess I didnt make myself clear enough. When you get to things that small, the volume is VERY small, and the surface area of the contacts is not so small. Which leads to a terribly poor weight to power ratio. And a terrible self-discharge ratio. So even if you had a quintillion of these cells, you'd still have an extremely poor battery. We're talking many powers of ten poor.
At least now we have an explanation for how humans came to be batteries.
Just what we need - a virus that keeps going and going and going... and of course, The latest thing: Virus made batteries for hearing-AIDS
What they should've focused on was the content of the joke, if it could be called that, Because damn, it wasn't funny. AT ALL. Your quibble's axon attached to my silect reactor, and this utterence over your eye pipes to the grey block beneath your brow will curdle under its stewing slog. Go fit yourself with jigsaw and kindly remove the portions responsible for communication you stupid meat bag.
Sincerely,
AC
The Reuters piece is a little scant on context. In a fit of shameless self-promotion, here's a piece I wrote for BW.com (http://tinyurl.com/n8dks). The work is indeed from Belcher's group at MIT.