Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Researchers Use Salmon DNA To Make LED Lightbulbs

Posted by Soulskill on from the bright-ideas-that-smell-fishy dept.

Al writes "Researchers from the University of Connecticut have created a new light-emitting material by doping spun strands of salmon DNA with fluorescent dyes. The material, which is robust because DNA is such a strong polymer, absorbs energy from ultraviolet light and gives off different colors depending on the amounts of dye it contains. A team led by chemistry professor Gregory Sotzing created the new material by mixing salmon DNA with two types of dye, then pumping the solution from a fine needle while a voltage is applied between the needle tip and a grounded copper plate covered with a glass slide. As the liquid jet comes out, it dries and forms long nanofibers that are deposited on the glass slide as a mat. The researchers then spin this nanofiber mat directly on the surface of an ultraviolet LED to make a white-light emitter. The color-tunable DNA material relies on an energy-transfer mechanism between two different fluorescent dyes, and the DNA keeps the dye molecules separated at a distance of 2 to 10 nanometers from each other."

66 comments

  1. I'll get my coat by iamapizza · · Score: 4, Funny

    What bass voltage did he have to apply to get it to work?

    --
    Always proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
    1. Re:I'll get my coat by treeves · · Score: 4, Funny

      Based on Ohm's law, you'd take the (downstream) current and multiply by the resistance to get the voltage. Since you're dealing with a liquid, you could also divide by the conductivity, known as *roe*.

      --
      ...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
    2. Re:I'll get my coat by BikeHelmet · · Score: 1

      You guys are behind the times! I first read up on salmon sperm luminescence years ago - sheesh!

      http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/11/salmon-sperm-used-to-intensify-leds-grossify-everyone/

  2. The whole thing's very fishy, yet.... by gestalt_n_pepper · · Score: 2, Funny

    Energy efficient, yet stinky... I *like* it!

    --
    Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
  3. Compare to standard flourescent bulb? by burtosis · · Score: 1

    Considering this is almost exactly how a flourescent bulb works (UV->flourescence->light) I wonder if this is actually cheaper, longer lasting or more efficent in some way, or just a neat bit of science with no future in terms of practical application.

    1. Re:Compare to standard flourescent bulb? by Kompressor · · Score: 1

      Well, if we can skip the mercury component, it might be significantly more environmentally friendly.

      --
      kmem russian roulette: Aquillar> dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/kmem bs=1 count=1 seek=$RANDOM
    2. Re:Compare to standard flourescent bulb? by josteos · · Score: 1

      Since we already have white LED's, I'd guess the real benefit is the ability to easily fine-tune the colors by adjusting the coating.

      --
      Save the Music; Save the World at http://www.TuneTriever.com (Our latest Android game)
    3. Re:Compare to standard flourescent bulb? by alta · · Score: 4, Funny

      Sorry, fish are full of mercury!

      --
      Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
    4. Re:Compare to standard flourescent bulb? by burtosis · · Score: 1

      The mercury is in mostly vapor form in the actual flourescent bulb - which is the UV source. You can take the phosphors that have 50 years of engineering behind them and place them on a UV diode (no mercury) and probably get a cheaper, more efficient and longer lasting product.

    5. Re:Compare to standard flourescent bulb? by interkin3tic · · Score: 1

      I wonder if this is actually cheaper, longer lasting or more efficent in some way, or just a neat bit of science with no future in terms of practical application.

      I wonder if the article mentions anything like that...

      The light emitters should also be longer-lasting because DNA is a very strong polymer, Sotzing says. "It's well beyond other polymers [in strength]," he notes, adding that it lasts 50 times longer than acrylic.

      ...

      "It's really very cool [work], and I think that it has practical promise," says Aaron Clapp, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Iowa State University. "[But] it seems like an overly dramatic way of doing it."

      Drat! Nothing!

      I guess it doesn't specifically say "This is directly applicable to the market" or "This is really more of a practical demonstration of a concept that we'll iron out to make something better" or "This is clearly better than the options that are out there now."

      Keep in mind also that this is technology review, they seem to emphasize the "Hey, cool little tidbit" rather than a detailed explanation as to market advantages, and are also light (heh heh) on the technical details wheras publications from the acutal researchers would be much more illuminating (too easy).

    6. Re:Compare to standard flourescent bulb? by thedonger · · Score: 4, Funny

      Since we already have white LED's, I'd guess the real benefit is the ability to give PETA something else about which they can complain..

      There. Fixed that for you.

      --
      Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
    7. Re:Compare to standard flourescent bulb? by samkass · · Score: 1

      "White" LEDs today use phosphors just like this one does, but the phosphors are inefficient. That's why white LEDs aren't the 10x gain in efficiency over CFBs you'd expect from LEDs. The problem with non-phosphorescent white LED lights is that green LEDs are extremely hard to make, and without them you can't combine a red-green-blue triplet to get something approximating white light. Even then the energy bands would be very narrow and some colors may look very strange under it.

      Anyway, this is basically a new manufacturing technique that has the potential for decreasing chemical use and increasing efficiency, not a new way of producing white light.

      --
      E pluribus unum
    8. Re:Compare to standard flourescent bulb? by ballpoint · · Score: 2, Funny

      The smell also needs to be compared. A flourescent bulb smells like wheat, a florescent bulb like roses, while this smells like fish.

      --
      Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
    9. Re:Compare to standard flourescent bulb? by Anynomous+Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      So this article is about a fishscent bulb, then ?

      --
      I'm not a coward by any name.
    10. Re:Compare to standard flourescent bulb? by burtosis · · Score: 1

      Why do you have to post such rye comments? Sheesh.. I guess that's what I get on slashdot for not using spell check.

    11. Re:Compare to standard flourescent bulb? by treeves · · Score: 1

      Well, that is something up with which I will not put!

      --
      ...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
    12. Re:Compare to standard flourescent bulb? by Pence128 · · Score: 1

      I think you mean blue LEDs. Green LEDs are very cheap and have been around for ages.

      --
      404: sig not found.
    13. Re:Compare to standard flourescent bulb? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      fishescent

  4. Why by bdrees · · Score: 1

    Thats one bright fish.... Seriously, Why did we give some research team money for this?

    1. Re:Why by click2005 · · Score: 2, Funny

      It was to cover up the fact that the faculty spent $400k at last year's xmas party on caviar.

      --
      I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
  5. Yeah, but the job description sucks by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 1

    Who wants to be the guy who spends all day "collecting salmon DNA"?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A5EVTXDDcU

  6. Eh? I thought DNA was DNA... by Ralph+Spoilsport · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I don't see what is so extra-special about salmon DNA. Why not housefly DNA? Bog knows there's several orders of magnitude more of those little buggers than salmon. Much of the wild salmon stock has dropped, and the salmon farms aren't helping matters. You would think if they needed DNA, they could get it in bulk from termites or ants or flies or algae or crabgrass...

    rs

    --
    Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
    1. Re:Eh? I thought DNA was DNA... by ikefox · · Score: 1

      I was wondering the same thing. Since they are using the DNA for its physical properties, and not its chemical "code", why salmon DNA?

    2. Re:Eh? I thought DNA was DNA... by interkin3tic · · Score: 3, Informative

      Or bacteria, which will give you orders of magnitude more DNA overnight than a week of fly collecting, and which are much easier to purify DNA from.

      This article also talks about using salmon DNA for lights. They had a good source:

      Steckl and colleagues used DNA from Japan. "Salmon fishing is a very large industry in Hokkaido, Japan, some 200 000 tons per year," explained Steckl. "While the meat and eggs are edible, the male roe is normally a waste product but it is very rich in DNA."

      That doesn't seem to be the same lab, and that article predates the technology review one. Maybe the Sotzing lab (featured in the technology review article) read the publications by Steckl lab (optics.org article) who used salmon DNA and decided to just use salmon DNA as they did to hurry up and publish rather than spend time seeing if salmon DNA was the only one which would do it.

      Of course, it could also have been that the Steckl lab got wind of the Sotzing lab's use of salmon DNA and just beat them to the punch. And these aren't the actual publications from either lab, so it really could be anything, they could have even collaborated. Either way, it seems like they just haven't tested other DNA, the optics.org article quotes Steckl as saying they might try other DNA.

    3. Re:Eh? I thought DNA was DNA... by JimboFBX · · Score: 1

      Isn't it obvious? Salmon DNA is cheap and easy to get! Just take any fish, cut it open, rip out the testicles, then squeeze them. Bam! Instant DNA with no waste to anything, and boy do you get a lot!

    4. Re:Eh? I thought DNA was DNA... by dfornika · · Score: 3, Informative

      It was most likely Salmon Sperm DNA, which is a common molecular biology reagent. If you've ever handled a spawning salmon, you know that the slightest squeeze will yield a lot of genetic material.

    5. Re:Eh? I thought DNA was DNA... by FlyingSquidStudios · · Score: 1

      I could have happily gone the rest of my life without knowing that little factoid. I'm certainly not eating any salmon for a while now.

      --
      http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
    6. Re:Eh? I thought DNA was DNA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Male roe? I thought roe were fish "eggs." Did I miss the memo again?

    7. Re:Eh? I thought DNA was DNA... by SlashBugs · · Score: 1

      It's a common reagent in molecular biology labs, so it's probably just that they had some handy and could buy more, ready-purified, very cheaply.

      The reason it's so common in labs is that it's extracted from salmon sperm, which is produced in colossal quantity at salmon farms, and the excess sold to scientists. Extracting DNA from sperm is much easier than, say, grinding up a whole fly. Once you've decided that you're after sperm, fish pump their sperm out into the water anyway so you don't need to "milk" it in the way that you'd need to if you wanted e.g. bull sperm.

    8. Re:Eh? I thought DNA was DNA... by PPalmgren · · Score: 1

      Well, at least you didn't just have salmon for lunch. I did

    9. Re:Eh? I thought DNA was DNA... by BinaryForces · · Score: 1

      Wouldn't electric eel DNA work better?

    10. Re:Eh? I thought DNA was DNA... by Guppy · · Score: 1

      You can get DNA out of most living tissues*, but the key factor here is cost and purity. A large part of the sperm cell is a mass of tightly-packed DNA, and compared with other tissues you have less protein, RNA, and other junk that needs to be separated out. And as previous repliers to this thread have mentioned, Salmon Sperm is cheap to obtain in large quantities.

      *: Note: Not all. For instance, mammalian red blood cells have neither a nucleus or mitochondria, so no DNA. The DNA in a blood sample comes from other types of cells present.

  7. Makes you wonder by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What if DNA were from some discarded alien light bulb that used a micro-organism grown to provide light?

  8. Meh by Lord+Grey · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... created the new material by mixing salmon DNA with two types of dye, then pumping the solution from a fine needle while a voltage is applied between the needle tip and a grounded copper plate covered with a glass slide. As the liquid jet comes out, it dries and forms long nanofibers that are deposited on the glass slide as a mat. The researchers then spin this nanofiber mat directly on the surface of an ultraviolet LED to make a white-light emitter.

    I did this by accident once, while trying to make breakfast.

    --
    // Beyond Here Lie Dragons
    1. Re:Meh by Facegarden · · Score: 0

      ... created the new material by mixing salmon DNA with two types of dye, then pumping the solution from a fine needle while a voltage is applied between the needle tip and a grounded copper plate covered with a glass slide. As the liquid jet comes out, it dries and forms long nanofibers that are deposited on the glass slide as a mat. The researchers then spin this nanofiber mat directly on the surface of an ultraviolet LED to make a white-light emitter.

      I did this by accident once, while trying to make breakfast.

      Haha, yeah. That exact quote just got me thinking:

      Jesus Christ, science is insane.

      -Taylor

      --
      Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
    2. Re:Meh by mrgiles · · Score: 1

      Gross. I am never eating breakfast at your place.

  9. Who will win? by davegravy · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'm taking bets:

    LED Salmon vs Laser Shark

    1. Re:Who will win? by Dannon · · Score: 1

      Are they ill-tempered?

      --
      Good judgment comes from experience.
      Experience comes from bad judgment.
    2. Re:Who will win? by Jared555 · · Score: 1

      Well.... A Laser LED Salmon could cut it's way out of the Laser Shark if swallowed.... But of course you have to assume that the teeth were avoided..... So many variables

  10. Instincts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What good is a lightbulb that keeps trying to swim back to the factory to spawn?

  11. Meh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Call me when they can make lasers from shark DNA...

  12. Comeon guys by hypergreatthing · · Score: 1

    Stop playing with your food!

    1. Re:Comeon guys by alienpeach · · Score: 1

      But it's for science!

  13. We're just scaling back by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

    We're just scaling back the whole "sharks with lasers" project to something less dangerous. We've learned our lesson, really!

    --
    Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  14. Reminds me of... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Simpsons episode In Marge We Trust.

  15. How about Mike Rowe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Get it?
    Get it?

  16. Lightbulb jokes by Nimey · · Score: 1

    How many salmon does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

    --
    Hail Eris, full of mischief...

    E pluribus sanguinem
    1. Re:Lightbulb jokes by dvoecks · · Score: 2, Funny

      Just two, my man, but how you get them in there is the tricky part.

  17. now i know whos leaving after the dolphins!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    so long and thanks for all the fish :)

  18. Well of course by Reed+Solomon · · Score: 1

    It was so obvious! How Could I not have seen this before!

    this should not be patentable.

  19. 1000 points of light by Nethead · · Score: 1

    So will this make my local salmon festival start looking like Xmas?

    --
    -- I have a private email server in my basement.
  20. My dog lost his nose. How does he smell? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Incoherently.

  21. a fishful of dollars by drkoemans · · Score: 2, Interesting

    this reminds me of that futurama episode where anchovy oil is the ultimate robot lubricant and extremely valuable after they have been fished to extinction. art imitates life yet again.

  22. Was this subconscious? by osgeek · · Score: 1

    The color-tunable DNA material

    Ugh...

    --
    Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
    1. Re:Was this subconscious? by Ant+P. · · Score: 1

      I guess this puts rest to the old theory that you can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish.

  23. luminosity? cost? by Taibhsear · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Is there a drop in luminosity compared to other leds? I mean this is really cool but if it isn't going to be as bright as any other process to make LEDs it's almost moot. Especially if it costs a lot more to make.

  24. What wavelength of UV? by Taibhsear · · Score: 1

    Also, DNA is degraded by UV, so unless this is at a specific wavelength of UV that doesn't interact with the DNA molecule itself this definitely won't be longer lasting.

  25. I was right! by clovis · · Score: 2, Funny

    My wife had been bugging me to throw out all those salmon I'd been keeping in the garage. "Whatever are you going to use them for?" she wanted to know. I'll show her this and then we'll know who's the clever one!

    1. Re:I was right! by Facegarden · · Score: 1

      You should have told her:

      "What would I use salmon for!? What do you think!? I'm going to mix salmon DNA with two types of dye, then pump the solution from a fine needle while a voltage is applied between the needle tip and a grounded copper plate covered with a glass slide. As the liquid jet comes out, it will dry and form long nanofibers that are deposited on the glass slide as a mat. I will then spin this nanofiber mat directly on the surface of an ultraviolet LED to make a white-light emitter. DUH!"

      -Taylor

      --
      Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
    2. Re:I was right! by clovis · · Score: 1

      I lie awake going over and over in my head what I _should_ have said, and that was it!
      Thanks man! I'm gonna use this next time.

  26. "Can we dominate a species more than that?" by blind+biker · · Score: 2, Funny

    We'll eat your eggs by the spoonful, with Vodka. And your very DNA will be used as a fluorescent dye.

    (I admit, I stole the idea for the joke from Louis CK. Genius comedian, that guy.)

    --
    "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
    1. Re:"Can we dominate a species more than that?" by Facegarden · · Score: 1

      We'll eat your eggs by the spoonful, with Vodka. And your very DNA will be used as a fluorescent dye.

      (I admit, I stole the idea for the joke from Louis CK. Genius comedian, that guy.)

      Haha, I recognized that right away! I love Lois CK. ..barrel of duck vaginas... heh.
      -Taylor

      --
      Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
  27. why salmon and it will cost to much by cinnamon+colbert · · Score: 4, Informative

    several posters have asked why salmon dna - ifyou look in a std catalog (say www.sial.com) you will see that fish dna is much cheaper then bacterial (e coli)
    this is cause each sperm cell has ~~1,000 times more dna then a bacterial cell, and sperm are easy to collect (hold the jokes) and easy to get dna out of - basically, you just put the sperm in a solution of detergent, and the dna pops out.

    but dna is pretty $$ (retail price of 48 dollars a gram in 10 gram lots at sial.com), it degrades in the environment, and typically, the organic dyes that bind to dna have greatly reduced stability compared to inorganic phosphors

    sounds like more ivory tower nonsense that will never lead to reasonably priced, cheap product

  28. Works on Human DNA, too. by TrebleJunkie · · Score: 1

    Don't believe me? Shine UV light on motel sheets.

    --

    Ed R.Zahurak

    You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.

  29. "strength" by Baldrson · · Score: 1
    TFA reports:

    The light emitters should also be longer-lasting because DNA is a very strong polymer, Sotzing says. "It's well beyond other polymers [in strength]," he notes, adding that it lasts 50 times longer than acrylic.

    Strength as a material property has no time dimension. What material property is Mr. Patel referring to in his paraphrase of Sotzing?

    --
    Seastead this.