Unique bacteria

Electrogenic bacteria are microorganisms that can naturally generate electricity through extracellular transference of electrons. To date, hundreds of species of electrogenic bacteria have been found, and they are everywhere, from the bottom of a lake to inside our own bodies. However, a particular bacterium of this type has unique characteristics, which have made it a great object of scientific study.Shewanella oneidensis is a bacterium discovered in the lakes of New York.[6] While most life-forms (including us) use oxygen to get energy, S. oneidensis “breathes” metal molecules such as manganese, lead, and iron, among others. For this, many of these bacteria join together and attach to the surface of rocks containing metals. Then, they release long filaments called nanowires, which they use to connect directly to the metal. In that way, the microbes transfer electrons from inside their bodies to metal molecules, and this flow of electrical current is what keeps them alive. Sometimes, S. oneidensis bacteria do the opposite and extract electrons from such metals, so they literally live on electricity.It is presumed that the nanowires of S. oneidensis allow it to conduct electricity over long distances, as well as to supply electrons to other nearby bacteria. The ability of S. oneidensis to generate electricity has aroused the interest of the scientific community. For example, some researchers are studying the potential of the bacterium to treat wastewater. Meanwhile, NASA took samples of these creatures to space to see if they can be used in the construction of future life-support systems.

Shewanella Oneidensis, electric microbe

Photo: NASA
Electrogenic bacteria are microorganisms that can naturally produce electricity through extracellular electron transfer. To date, scientists have discovered hundreds of species of electrogenic bacteria, and they are found virtually everywhere from the bottom of lakes to even our own innards. However, one particular species of these bacteria has rather unique properties that have made it a very interesting object for scientific research.
Shewanella oneidensis is a bacterium found in New York lakes. To obtain energy, most creatures on our planet, including you and me, use oxygen, but Shewanella oneidensis “breathes” with molecules of metals such as manganese, lead, iron, and several others. To survive, these bacteria usually form groups and attach themselves to the surface of rocks with high concentrations of metals. Then they release long processes (nanofibers) and with their help directly contact the metal. In this way, microbes transfer electrons from their bodies to metal molecules, and the resulting electric current supplies them with the necessary energy. Sometimes Shewanella oneidensis behaves in the opposite way and absorbs electrons from metals, so these bacteria literally live on electricity.
Presumably, the nanofibers of these electrogenic bacteria can conduct electricity over long distances, as well as provide electrons to nearby bacteria that need them.The ability of Shewanella oneidensis to produce electricity has generated a lot of interest in the scientific community. For example, some researchers have begun to study the potential of these bacteria to clean up polluted water bodies. Experts from the NASA space agency have already sent these crumbs into orbit to see if they can be useful to us as an alternative energy source for building future life support systems outside the earth's atmosphere.

Modified E. coli, living computer

Photo: Seth Shipman
People have long been trying to find the best way to store information. Several thousand years ago, we began to share our ideas and stories through cave paintings. Then books and computers appeared, and more recently, scientists have found that it is possible to store information even in diamond crystals, but this is not the limit. The researchers are now working on integrating the data directly into bacteria. Yes, yes, some microbes are able to store texts, videos and images, while becoming a kind of living computers.
As you know, when a bacterium destroys an enemy virus, it retains in its body small fragments of the DNA of its victim. In this way, microbes learn to recognize similar threats in the future. Scientists from Harvard University decided to take advantage of this property of bacteria and grew a colony of 600,000 E. coli specifically for their new experiment. The scientists encoded an image of a human hand and a short video of a galloping horse into the strain's DNA. To activate the protective mechanism of E. coli, scientists passed an electric current through the colony, and these microbes literally absorbed man-made DNA with a hidden message.
To test if their method worked, the scientists sequenced each bacterium's new genetic code, and when they ran the entire sequence through a computer program, it decoded the data and converted it back into graphic files.Incredibly, the resulting images almost completely matched the original data with a difference of a few pixels. So far, all this may seem too complicated, but in fact, modern technologies for genome sequencing make it possible to perform all these manipulations quite simply.
By the way, this is not the first time that E. coli has played the role of a carrier of information. For example, in 2003, American scientists sewed the text of an entire song into bacterial DNA, and in 2011, Canadian writer Christian Bok encoded his poem into the DNA of a single bacterium of Escherichia coli. If you're wondering exactly what potential bacteria have, just think about the fact that 1 gram of DNA can hold 455 exabytes of information (455 billion gigabytes), which is about a quarter of all the data accumulated by humans today. Perhaps in the near future we will be able to use modified E. coli populations as personal microcomputers…