Yeast-Powered Fuel Cell Feeds On Human Blood

holy_calamity writes "Canadian researchers have taken a sensible, if slightly creepy, step towards solving the problem of medical implant batteries running down. They've built a fuel cell powered by yeast that feed on the glucose in human blood. If this makes it into people, keeping your implants going will be as simple as eating a donut."

Comments

If its not april Fools

[TinBromide]

Is anybody else a little wary of yeast cells that can live inside the human body and process blood? They're talking about implanting these inside the body to power pacemakers. I didn't see anything in the article about april fools.

This kind of takes a yeast infection to a whole new level, the original kind is already hard enough to get rid of, and its not systemic. Fungal infections inside the body are very hard to treat because fungi cells are so similar to animal cells and its hard to kill one without harming the other.

I guess its time for the obligatory "I for one welcome our vampiric mono-cellular overlords."

Diabetes Management

[BarefootClown]

If this were used to power a glucose meter and microprocessor, and throttled appropriately, could it be used to manage blood sugar for diabetics?

Re:Waste

[orclevegam]

The best solution is a modified yeast like bacteria that produces wastes compatible with the host. That sort of genetic engineering is still in its infancy though. My biggest concern would be more along the lines of ensuring the bacteria remain where they're supposed to be and don't decide to wander out into the rest of the patient or don't mutate into something more dangerous.

Eliminating waste products is easy

[Morgaine]

TFA didn't really phrase the paragraph about waste elimination too well.

It's not so much that "leaching out of harmful substances into the bloodstream" is a problem. The real issue is devising a process for the yeasts that produces only normal metabolic waste. Given that, waste elimination is really easy, since the body has terrific mechanisms for locking up toxins and circulatory systems for eliminating them.

Extremely low performance, for now.

[blind biker]

I do micro fuel cells, and part of my research is bio-fuel cells - similar to the one in the article. While this is valuable research, you shouldn't get too excited, yet: it's not the only device of its kind, and the performance is not even nearly sufficient, for now, for any application. It's a proof of concept, and sometimes (non-reproduceable) with better than meager power density. But, I do believe that the future of implantable fuel cells is bright. It even may be that we won't need enzymes (or bacteria) at all, which would be perfect. Some metallizations and stable inorganic compounds might do the trick using blood plasma without any added bio-active catalyst.