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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.
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?
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?
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.
Ahem. The breakthrough is that they're using virusses.
Not everything has to be 'biggest EVER' or 'smallest EVER' to be impressive, you know.
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.
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 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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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