U of M Researchers Create First Bionic Particle
http://www.salon.com/2014/05/22/scientists_create_bionic_particles_inspired_by_terminator/
Bionic particles combining proteins and semiconductors, with the goal of deriving fuel from sunlight using photosynthesis.
According to the University of Michigan, the particles 'blend the strengths of inorganic materials, which can readily convert light energy to electron energy, with biological molecules whose chemical functions have been highly developed through evolution.'
To be fair, University of Pittsburgh researchers got equal credit in the article, which also links to umich.edu.
What does this mean? I don't science, but this sounds hella cool.
First off, I'm not a huge fan of that article. Instead, the OP should link to the umich article. It's much less sensationalist and contains more of the actual science.
I also want to clear up that cytochrome c is not actually a molecule involved in photosynthesis. Rather, it is an electron carrier in cellular respiration. Minor difference, but it makes me nervous about the validity of the rest of the article.
Anyway... this is mostly just a step in the right direction. From what I gather, the paper doesn't really claim to have created an important application for this yet. This is just the basis for future development, which could take quite awhile. What they've done is figured out a mechanism to create self assembling complexes of biological molecules and inorganic (created) materials (in this case, a semi conductor).
In their experiment they were able to make these complexes convert nitrate (NO3-) to nitrite (NO2-) and O2. Nitrate is toxic at high levels in water, but in most circumstances it never gets high enough (it usually happens on farms near lakes/rivers where too much fertilizer was used). The problem they ran into is that this process eventually degraded the complexes enough to where they didn't work any longer, something they can work on fixing.
What I imagine the process these partiles use is something like:
sunlight excites electrons in semi conductors -> electron transferred to cytochrome c (a soluble electron carrier) -> electrons used in other enzymatic processes that convert nitrate to nitrite.
Using this for carbon fixation is a whole nother animal. It warrants future study, but we're still a long ways away from that.
Thanks for this. It seems that Mgoblog has a highly-educated poster for every issue.
Just wait until those little bastards become self-aware!
there was a chip left behind when the arm got trapped in the machine at the end of terminator 2.
The article failed to mention Mitch McGary's involvement in this project.
Alas, converting nitrate into nitrite is nowhere close to being able to convert CO2 into usable fuel. That's a 'future effort'.
Can never measure up to this smokin' bionic particle:
Lindsay Wagner was so hot back then!
Denard is not here anymore, but maybe he left something in his wake?
Is this on the same level as the earth is round or is it more like they figured out how to get cheese in the crust of a pizza?
It's really big news potentially...so I'm going to liken it to the cheese in the crust.