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.'"

Comments

Dynamic ICs

[AnalystX]

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.

Amusing

[Anonymous Coward]

But how much power would the 'rice grain battery' put out?

Re:Amusing

[hey!]

Presumably enough to run a very small machine.

If these machines can be "manufactured" in sufficiently large numbers, perhaps by some self-assembly process, then you have the power source for a swarm of robot ants or termites, which collectively have the power to transform things on a larger scale.

Re:Lemme see here..

[Frenchman113]

The real question is what's the point of this? The only reason I can think of that this might be better than just building batteries (wires and all) is that the viruses self replicate, but still, this is hardly a breakthrough.

Animal to Computer Virus?

[kartack]

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.

Yahoo article misses a point, see original paper

[mapkinase]

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.