Biologists discover electric bacteria that eat pure electrons!!

Well,if this had come out on April the 1st,I would not have believed it,but it does seem to be legit-A form of bacteria which exists by eating only electrons...

Some intrepid biologists at the University of Southern California (USC) have discovered bacteria that survives on nothing but electricity — rather than food, they eat and excrete pure electrons.
These bacteria yet again prove the almost miraculous tenacity of life — but, from a technology standpoint, they might also prove to be useful in enabling the creation of self-powered nanoscale devices that clean up pollution.
Some of these bacteria also have the curious ability to form into ‘biocables,’ microbial nanowires that are centimeters long and conduct electricity as well as copper wires — a capability that might one day be tapped to build long, self-assembling subsurface networks for human use.

www.extremetech.com... ife

How weird is that-A kind of useable electonic virus/bacterial colony of sorts...
I am having trouble getting my noggin around the concept to be honest.
Check out this youtube video of the bacteria making wires and a lasso-Weird or what folks?




Stranger things in heaven and earth and all that..

This is one of the little rascals,named "geobacter metallireducens":

www.extremetech.com...

What a completley alien looking lifeform.

Amazing find!

a reply to: ArtemisE

Indeed it is-it could be the true link to the super sci fi future that is our destiny it seems-for good or bad..
This could change all electronics in ways I cannot yet fathom.
Invisible,massive networks in the ground,the air-maybe in humans too.
One step away from the Borg?
Or an evolutionary step forward?

This could be massive IMHO.

What a fascinating find - given that there is salt in sea water, there are always ions floating about (atoms with a +ve, or -ve charge due to missing or extra electrons). All a bacterium has to do is extend tentacles out and they will find a potential difference between different points. Then they can exploit that to create a small electric current and power themselves. And if there isn't enough of a current, they can team up with other bacterium and get a stronger potential difference through a greater distance.

a reply to: Silcone Synapse

How cool is that?! Excreting electricity! .....I'm thinking batteries of colonies.

F&S&

this reminds me of some of the results from the arsenic based life....there has to be so many ways to reach life this universe is filled with life...and think of how that life evolves or did evolve...i bet there is some weird # out there!

a reply to: Silcone Synapse

I was expecting this to be a joke but fascinating, they need to metabolise something or mitosis could not take place but what, maybe atmospheric gas, and the electron link is truly fascinating.
This is as alien as anything I have heard about but I still can not imagine how such a life form could exist or evolve unless it is a recent mutation of some kind, still if this is right then bioelectronic's just recieved a much needed shot to the arm still pandora's box and all.
Still not sure this can be correct as it goes against every principle or life on earth that I know of, unless it escaped a lab somewhere.

A creature that can crap out Raw Energy!? Thats like a Goose laying eggs of gold.

S&F

a reply to: LABTECH767

The idea that it could be a mutated bacteria is fascinating Labtech!-could it be that our modern world with its abundance of electricity flowing across the globe has encouraged such a mutation?

The ultimate sustainable food source?

Wow..

But for folks thinking it is the golden egg of energy-I am sad to say I don't think it is-what it does is catch and eat the electrons which already exist,then excrete them out...So it seems to be like a worm in the soil-a recycling machine-but these electron eaters can be encouraged to form lines,wires-so that could one day be exploited in as yet unimaginable ways in terms of electronics and networks I think.

I hope they could also be used to be the ultimate disease busters.
But too early to say.

This discovery reminds me of a Star Trek episode, where a space life form attaches itself to the Enterprise and fed off the energy of the warp core...very cool stuff..

I think this is the stuff:

microbewiki.kenyon.edu...

And its class has been known about since 1987 according to wiki-but these new properties have only just been observed as in the youtube vid in the OP.

en.wikipedia.org...

It oxidises metals-maybe by introducing air into the metals through the weird electron hunting/eating behaviour?
Hmm..

iv'e a hard time believe this but it isnt april the 1st and the link makes sense.

sorry for this bad pun in advance but: shocking

There's a few articles about this and it's a wee bit sensationalized. The impression is given that they don't require any nutrients at all and clearly, they aren't aren't made of electrons as that would be quite impossible. If I'm reading this correctly, they've discovered lithotrophs that can produce ATP without an electron donor.

EDIT:

Here's a related article from last year in Astrobiology Magazine.

Did they just discover the root of morgellons disease?

It seems oddly familiar of the strands of threads coming out of peoples skin.

It's not actually, that they "eat" electrons. They conduct them. It's a pretty new found bacteria, though and the real amazing thing about it (as far as i understand it) is, that there are various ones, that combine to build long filaments (the lassos in the video), that serve as a kind of conductor cable between them.

The word you should search for is Desulfobulbaceae.

a reply to: Silcone Synapse

Let us hope that they take up what the fire ants in the south and flock to electrical circuits, shorting them out frequently ruining high dollar equipment.

You don't suppose they can infect computers and learn from them do ya?

(Calling Steven King. Here is a new plot device for ya!)

a reply to: Silcone Synapse

I wonder if they found or created these creatures, if they found them I wonder why they have remained hidden so long.

originally posted by: Tichy
It's not actually, that they "eat" electrons. They conduct them. It's a pretty new found bacteria, though and the real amazing thing about it (as far as i understand it) is, that there are various ones, that combine to build long filaments (the lassos in the video), that serve as a kind of conductor cable between them.

The word you should search for is Desulfobulbaceae.

they eat and excrete pure electrons.

these bacteria were definitely eating electrons directly.

Some of these bacteria also have the curious ability to form into ‘biocables,’ microbial nanowires that are centimeters long and conduct electricity as well as copper wires

www.extremetech.com... ife

a reply to: Silcone Synapse

ok...even I know that electron(s) are part of an atom, bacteria may eat atoms of protein, enzymes, etc.....but, they do not break apart individual atoms to eat only electrons...