TECHNOLOGY FOR CHANGE

Bacteria Grow Organic Local-Area Networks

R. Colin Johnson | Date: 10-26-10 | Comments

Researchers believe that recently discovered microbial "electrical hairs" work like nanoscale local-area networks, allowing bacteria to communicate shared threats, collective capabilities and other information that helps the colony distribute resources and survive.

Table of Contents:

Bacteria Grow Organic Local-Area Networks
The human body has long been known to perform internal communications among nerve cells with electro-chemical signals, but now bacteria have been shown to set up their own external communication links among widely separated cells using organic nanowires.

Bacteria are independent cells that live together in colonies.

"For a long time we knew that bacteria could move electrons through their cells, but what we know now is that they can build wires�the idea being that they grow these hairlike appendages out of their cell bodies," said Professor Moh El-Naggar at the University of Southern California (Los Angeles). "They build this wire out of their cell body all the way to the electrons they are breathing, which could be the electrode of a microbial fuel cell. You essentially use that wire to transport electrons just like you would use a breathing tube to breathe oxygen."

Respiration is the hallmark of all living systems. Human respiration is usually thought of as acquiring oxygen and getting rid of carbon dioxide, but electronically breathing could be viewed as ridding us of excess electrons. Likewise, bacteria appear to use these until now mostly ignored nanowires to rid themselves of excess electrical charge. There is also evidence that the lines are used for communications among widely dispersed cells, such as in planar biofilms, which can benefit from providing conduits to shed the excess electrical charge produced by respiration.

Next: Self-Repairing Structures >>

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