Science trip out!
Science trip out!
Electric bacteria.
Philip K. Dick missed these. :)
H/T Frank Gainsford
Originally shared by Lacerant Plainer
Shocking discovery : Well not really. I just couldn't resist the headline. Scientists have found bacteria which can live off poisonous heavy metals. The net effect is that some bacteria deposit electrons on the heavy metal, in some other cases, bacteria do the reverse. The result is that the bacteria are actually eating and breathing electricity. While this is not breaking news of any sort, its fascinating by itself.
Bacteria grow wire-like probes : The bacterium grows special wires out of its membrane that transport electrons from inside the cell and deposit them on the heavy metal. Maganese oxide works, but so do other heavy metals like lead. Other discoveries revealed bacteria that are doing the reverse—they scavenge electrons from metal and minerals. The electron exchange completes that circuit. The result is life that eats and breathes electricity. Still, it gets weirder. One of Nealson’s graduate students, Annette Rowe, has found six new bacterial strains dredged from the ocean floor that don’t need a source of carbon at all, reports Powell. They can live off of electricity alone.
Mechanism : Unlike any other living thing on Earth, electric bacteria use energy in its purest form. Experiments growing bacteria on battery electrodes demonstrate that these novel, mind-boggling forms of life are essentially eating and excreting electricity. That should not come as a complete surprise, says Kenneth Nealson at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. We know that life, when you boil it right down, is a flow of electrons: "You eat sugars that have excess electrons, and you breathe in oxygen that willingly takes them." Our cells break down the sugars, and the electrons flow through them in a complex set of chemical reactions until they are passed on to electron-hungry oxygen.
'Eating' Electricity : Nealson's team is one of a handful that is now growing these bacteria directly on electrodes, keeping them alive with electricity and nothing else – neither sugars nor any other kind of nutrient. The highly dangerous equivalent in humans, he says, would be for us to power up by shoving our fingers in a DC electrical socket.
One step closer to a fuel cell? : Researchers would later use the bacteria to construct a microbial "fuel cell" in which bacteria handed off electrons not to rust, but to an electrode that could harvest this current. If some microbes could generate the energy they needed by moving electrons outside their cells, Girguis and colleagues wondered, could others do the same by taking electrons in? "That question brought us back to iron," he said. "The microbes that are the focus of this paper are the mirror image of the ones that eat rust. Instead of using iron oxide to breathe, they actually make iron oxides from free iron."
References, sources and links
http://www.popsci.com/have-we-found-alien-life
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/microbes-breathe-and-eat-electricity-make-us-re-think-what-life-180953883/?no-ist
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25894-meet-the-electric-life-forms-that-live-on-pure-energy.html#.VNb5KS4wBIz
Related paper : http://mbio.asm.org/content/4/1/e00420-12
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140310144000.htm
Additional paper: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140226/ncomms4391/full/ncomms4391.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbial_fuel_cell
#science #fuelcell #bacteria
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j_gJ2teK5E
Electric bacteria.
Philip K. Dick missed these. :)
H/T Frank Gainsford
Originally shared by Lacerant Plainer
Shocking discovery : Well not really. I just couldn't resist the headline. Scientists have found bacteria which can live off poisonous heavy metals. The net effect is that some bacteria deposit electrons on the heavy metal, in some other cases, bacteria do the reverse. The result is that the bacteria are actually eating and breathing electricity. While this is not breaking news of any sort, its fascinating by itself.
Bacteria grow wire-like probes : The bacterium grows special wires out of its membrane that transport electrons from inside the cell and deposit them on the heavy metal. Maganese oxide works, but so do other heavy metals like lead. Other discoveries revealed bacteria that are doing the reverse—they scavenge electrons from metal and minerals. The electron exchange completes that circuit. The result is life that eats and breathes electricity. Still, it gets weirder. One of Nealson’s graduate students, Annette Rowe, has found six new bacterial strains dredged from the ocean floor that don’t need a source of carbon at all, reports Powell. They can live off of electricity alone.
Mechanism : Unlike any other living thing on Earth, electric bacteria use energy in its purest form. Experiments growing bacteria on battery electrodes demonstrate that these novel, mind-boggling forms of life are essentially eating and excreting electricity. That should not come as a complete surprise, says Kenneth Nealson at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. We know that life, when you boil it right down, is a flow of electrons: "You eat sugars that have excess electrons, and you breathe in oxygen that willingly takes them." Our cells break down the sugars, and the electrons flow through them in a complex set of chemical reactions until they are passed on to electron-hungry oxygen.
'Eating' Electricity : Nealson's team is one of a handful that is now growing these bacteria directly on electrodes, keeping them alive with electricity and nothing else – neither sugars nor any other kind of nutrient. The highly dangerous equivalent in humans, he says, would be for us to power up by shoving our fingers in a DC electrical socket.
One step closer to a fuel cell? : Researchers would later use the bacteria to construct a microbial "fuel cell" in which bacteria handed off electrons not to rust, but to an electrode that could harvest this current. If some microbes could generate the energy they needed by moving electrons outside their cells, Girguis and colleagues wondered, could others do the same by taking electrons in? "That question brought us back to iron," he said. "The microbes that are the focus of this paper are the mirror image of the ones that eat rust. Instead of using iron oxide to breathe, they actually make iron oxides from free iron."
References, sources and links
http://www.popsci.com/have-we-found-alien-life
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/microbes-breathe-and-eat-electricity-make-us-re-think-what-life-180953883/?no-ist
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25894-meet-the-electric-life-forms-that-live-on-pure-energy.html#.VNb5KS4wBIz
Related paper : http://mbio.asm.org/content/4/1/e00420-12
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140310144000.htm
Additional paper: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140226/ncomms4391/full/ncomms4391.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbial_fuel_cell
#science #fuelcell #bacteria
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j_gJ2teK5E
Thanx for the re-share. appreciated
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