The Gang of Five
Beyond the Mysterious Beyond => The Fridge => Topic started by: vonboy on April 29, 2011, 11:22:07 AM
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Looks like soon we will be able to use viruses to construct nanostructures for us, such as the layers in a battery. This could be done at room temperature without the use of any harmful chemicals.
Angela Belcher: Using Viruses to Grow Batteries (http://www.ted.com/talks/angela_belcher_using_nature_to_grow_batteries.html)
Looks really cool.
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This is an intermediate step between microscale manufacturing (the way we build solar cells and intergrated circuits now) and molecular manufacturing (building nanoscale devices atom by atom). It looks they made a step ahead in solving the problem of the self-replicating machine, a device that could build many types of simpler devices AND an exact copy of itself. However, viruses are not true self-replicating machines, because they need a bacteria to replicate. Viruses have a controler (proteins) and blueprint (DNA or RNA), but no constructor (rybosomes).
If they can make bacteria that can assemble into solar cells, then we would be able to cover the Earth's surface with them in a few years.
Anyway, kudos to the people who did this!
EDIT: It appears that people are already utilizing bacteria as micromachines (article (http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=20336.php))