RV: Electricity from Viruses May Power Personal Devices

Fuente: REALscience
Expuesto el: martes, 15 de mayo de 2012 22:02
Autor: Michael Bradbury
Asunto: Electricity from Viruses May Power Personal Devices

 

Not every virus has a pathological purpose. Sure they make us sick regularly and terrorize our computers. But researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Lab in Berkeley have found a good use for harmless viruses ― electricity generators. Imagine walking down the street and charging your cellphone just from the motion of your feet. Scientists have been trying to capture the piezoelectric effect so that motion will create electricity and power our gadgets. In new research at that appears in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, a team at LLNL found they can squish sheets of viruses between two plates and generate enough electricity to power a simple liquid-crystal display. It's only the first step in generating electricity on the go but it's an important one. a, The M13 phage is ~880 nm in length and ~6.6 nm in diameter, is covered by ~2,700 pVIII coat proteins and has five copies each of pIII (grey lines) and pIX (black lines) proteins at either end. b, Side view of the electrostatic potential of M13 phage after bioengineered modification with four glutamate amino acids. The dipole moments generated by ten α-helical major coat proteins are directed from the N-terminus (blue) to the C-terminus (red). Yellow arrows indicate dipole direction. c, Vertical cross-sectional view of the electrostatic potential of M13 phage. The pVIII coat proteins assemble with five-fold rotational and two-fold screw symmetry. d, Side-view representation of the electrostatic potential of a single M13-phage pVIII coat protein. The pVIII coat protein has an ~20° tilt angle with respect to the phage long axis. The colours of the molecular surface indicate positive (red), neutral (white) and negative (blue) electrostatic potentials. Yellow arrows filled with two colours (red and blue) represent the dipole pointing from negative (blue) to positive (red) regions. e, Primary structure of the engineered major coat protein. Amino acids with positively and negatively charged side chains are labelled in red and blue, respectively. The engineered four-glutamate (4E) amino-acid sequence is underlined. Seung-Wuk Lee made a thin rubbery film from layers of genetically-engineered, non-toxic viruses, which are only harmful to the e coli bacteria into which they are inserted. He discovered that when pressure is applied the phage particles scatter and as they zip around a tiny spark of energy begins an electrical process which Lee and his team are confident can be scaled up to power phones, computers and other personal devices. Lee says, "We ended up with trillions or jillions of these virus particles, which can generate the electricities." He says the viruses cost nothing because they keep manufacturing themselves. Lee just adds water and waits. Phage can be produced simply and economically by infecting bacteria. The phage then co-opts the bacterial metabolism to continuously synthesize and secrete new phage particles, leading to millions of copies after culturing overnight. A little ways off, Lee sees the big potential for this little science experiment. He says, "Maybe 5 or 10 years later, we can begin to make very small, personalized electric generators." Most piezoelectric generators ― from eco-friendly dance floors in Europe to a little jacket worn by a hamster on a wheel at Georgia Tech� use toxic and chemically treated wires to capture the kinetic energy being generated by mechanical motion. But the Berkeley experiment uses harmless viruses called phages. Common biotechnology techniques enable large-scale production of genetically modified phages so phage-based piezoelectric materials potentially offer a simple and environmentally friendly approach to piezoelectric energy generation.

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