Electricity-conducting biological nanowire
Technological advances with potential for improving human health sometimes come from the most unexpected places. An intriguing example is an electricity-conducting biological nanowire that holds promise for powering miniaturized pacemakers and other implantable electronic devices.
The nanowires come from a bacterium called Geobacter sulfurreducens, shown in the electron micrograph above. This rod-shaped microbe (white) was discovered two decades ago in soil collected from an unlikely place: a ditch outside of Norman, Oklahoma. The bug can conduct electricity along its arm-like appendages, and, in the hydrocarbon-contaminated, oxygen-depleted soil in which it lives, such electrical inputs and outputs are essentially the equivalent of breathing.
Read more: directorsblog.nih.gov/2019/07/18/surprising-electricity-c...
Credit: Edward H. Egelman, University of Virginia Health System
NIH support from: National Institute of General Medical Sciences, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, & the NIH Common Fund
Electricity-conducting biological nanowire
Technological advances with potential for improving human health sometimes come from the most unexpected places. An intriguing example is an electricity-conducting biological nanowire that holds promise for powering miniaturized pacemakers and other implantable electronic devices.
The nanowires come from a bacterium called Geobacter sulfurreducens, shown in the electron micrograph above. This rod-shaped microbe (white) was discovered two decades ago in soil collected from an unlikely place: a ditch outside of Norman, Oklahoma. The bug can conduct electricity along its arm-like appendages, and, in the hydrocarbon-contaminated, oxygen-depleted soil in which it lives, such electrical inputs and outputs are essentially the equivalent of breathing.
Read more: directorsblog.nih.gov/2019/07/18/surprising-electricity-c...
Credit: Edward H. Egelman, University of Virginia Health System
NIH support from: National Institute of General Medical Sciences, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, & the NIH Common Fund