io9
All viruses have an organic outer shell, but it turns out that with a little genetic tinkering they can be trained to produce an inorganic outer shell made of gold or cobalt oxide. Angela Belcher's lab at MIT has created an entire factory of trained viruses whose genes have been reprogrammed to grow battery ingredients. They're also growing ingredients for solar cells, as well as computer monitors and water-purification systems.
Belcher told a rapt audience at the AAAS conference over the weekend about how she could create a liquid full of these altered viruses, dip a thin sheet of plastic into it, add a few more ingredients, and wind up with a translucent, ultra-thin battery. After working on this project for just over a year, her team got the battery to power an LED, and now they're scaling up to something that could power your next laptop or cell phone.
"Let's see what we can get biology to do for us," she said. "It's just a matter of giving biology new opportunities, new materials to work with." One audience member asked if Belcher is concerned about the viruses mutating and perhaps replicating on their own. Not possible, responded Belcher. The only mutations she's seen so far have been viruses reverting back to their old state (ie, making regular virus shells instead of battery components), and viruses making depolarized battery components.
So we won't be seeing a plague that turns your lithium ion batteries into piles of virus any time soon.
Biomolecular Materials Group [Angela Belcher's Lab]
Comments
See? All this time, we've already had nanotechnology. We just had to figure out its programming instructions.
"So we won't be seeing a plague that turns your lithium ion batteries into piles of virus any time soon."
Oh yeah, because scientists ALWAYS foresee every possible difficulty that might arise with a new technology. Like they did with pesticides, lead paint, pthalates and bisphenol a.
There is absolutely no possible way this could go wrong.
Besides, if a battery virus mutated to replicate itself, wouldn't that just make the battery stronger?
@AdamL: Well, there are always unpredictable outcomes. But viruses who build themselves coats made of metal or gold aren't exactly dangerous. These are bacteriophages, so they only attack bacteria -- it's not like they'll jump inside your body and try to make batteries. Even if they did, it would be hard for them to do that without having access to gold particles and cobal oxide. (No, you don't have those elements in your body.) So I think in this case we're pretty safe.
These technologies are really cool, and have exciting possibilities.
Won't take long for the anti-genetic engineering luddites to start up the shrieking, though. Heck, Europe's afraid of high-yield crops.
-Kle.
I'm guessing thirty generations before they try to unionize.
I can't wait for the day when people get sick and turn to gold...!
@mik3cap: Read Annalee Newitz's comment.
The only thing I could see going wrong is when they get out of the manufacturing phase and get into the product phase (Instead of making ingredients for water purification, they are the purification system)
I think anyone who sees people turning gold and it mutating into superplague are thinking dramatically not practically. It would make a good horror story, but a very unlikely reality. After all, it isn't like they manufacture gold atoms!
Once we have that ability, do you really think we will need viruses? We could make a replicator!
I wonder if these viruses could be used to economically extract dissolved gold from sea water...
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