electric bacteria

electric bacteria

Biologists at the University of Southern California (USC) have discovered bacteria that eats electricity, not your conventional meal certainly, and then excretes pure electrons in return. The electrifying bacteria may prove useful – amongst other things, enable creation of self-powered nanoscale devices that can clean up pollution.

What’s interesting is that these bacteria have the ability to form into ‘biocables’, or microbial nanowires that conduct electricity as well as copper wires. Imagine the ability to build long, self-assembling subsurface networks for us to use. Sounds almost alien tech!

USC biologists first scooped some sediment from the ocean, stuck some electrodes into a culture and turned on the power. The bacteria would ‘eat’ electrons from the electrode when higher voltages were pumped into the water, and on the other hand would ‘exhale’ electrons when a lower voltage was present. This creates an electrical current.

Various researchers from around the world have so far discovered over 10 different kinds of bacteria that feed on electricity.

geobacter-metallireducens-bacterium

Kenneth Nealson of USC said about his team’s discovery, “This is huge. What it means is that there’s a whole part of the microbial world that we don’t know about.”

Can we one day coerce electric bacteria to build submarine cables for cheap? That day may very well come.

 

Source: Extreme Tech and New Scientist