Home |Life | News

Subterranean bugs reach out for their energy

Pictures of spreads from New Scientist magazine

IMAGINE having 15-metre-long arms that you could use to pluck fruit off trees. Some bacteria have an equivalent ability: they can make "arms" 10 times their own length to help them process nutrients.

The Geobacter family of bacteria live underground. They get their energy by oxidising organic molecules such as oils, a process that involves stripping electrons from the organic molecules and dumping them onto iron oxide crystals around them. But the crystals do not dissolve in water and hence cannot be absorbed by the microbe. They can also be quite far away. So how do the bacteria make use of them?

Now Derek Lovley, Gemma Reguera and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have found that the Geobacter sulfurreducens species makes "nanowires" that are 20 micrometres long, 10 times the length of the bacterium. The wires are 3 to 5 nanometres wide and conduct electricity about as well ...



App + web

$25.99 - Save 65%

12 issues for $2.17 per issue
by quarterly direct debit
Print + web

$28.99 - Save 61%

12 issues for $2.42 per issue
by quarterly direct debit
Print + app + web

$39.99 - Save 73%

12 issues for $3.33 per issue
by quarterly direct debit


30 day web pass
Prices may vary according to delivery country and associated local taxes.
© Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.