Bacterial magnets and the
bio-computer era By Raja Murthy
MUMBAI - Scientists are working to have
some of the world's smallest creatures carry the
growing mountain-loads of information worldwide -
the next generation of information technology and
medical devices based on bacteria, biology and
billions of years of evolution.
Researchers from Tokyo University of
Agriculture and Technology and University of Leeds
are studying bacteria that produce magnets, and
how these can be used to produce faster, cheaper,
environmentally friendly electronics and
computers.
Magnetospirilllum magneticum
are the microbial heroes in this story. These
underwater dwelling organisms use in-born
magnetism to navigate across the Earth. When these
bacterial creatures are fed iron, scientists
discovered, they generate tiny magnetic crystals.
And these crystals can be designed to make
the next generation of
electronics and surgery aids in medicine [1].
Traditional electronics is quickly
reaching limits of technology to make smaller,
more powerful devices, says project leader Dr
Sarah Staniland from Leeds University, Britain. So
she and her colleagues are using Ma Nature's help
to expand frontiers of nanotechnology.
"Biology has had millennia to experiment
through evolution," Staniland said in an e-mail to
Asia Times Online. "Proteins have evolved which
are nano-scale factories with specific function
and purposes. We can use this to our advantage,
and let biology build more precise nano-scale
materials and nanotechnologies for us."
Her project uses the same protein that
builds these nano-magnets in the next frontier of
nanotechnology. Named after the Greek "nano"
meaning "dwarf", nanotechnology involves creating
devices one billionth of meter in size.
Staniland, a professor of nanotechnology
at the University of Leeds in Britain, said her
project aims to develop a "toolkit of proteins and
chemicals" to grow computer and electronic
components. The research findings were first
published in the nano-technology journal Small [2]
last November.
Staniland had earlier
worked in the lab of Professor Tadashi Matsunaga,
from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and
Technology seven years ago. There she met her
current project colleague Dr Masayoshi Tanaka, and
helped him earn a Royal Society International
Newton Fellowship for him to work at her lab in
Leeds [3].
Their collaboration could lead
to computers fully based on biological systems, Dr
Tanaka said in an e-mail to Asia Times Online, and
devices that store, process and transfer
information just as automatically as biological
cells,
More importantly, such
biology-based nanotechnology could save lives in
with better surgical aids. Tanaka has created
nano-scale tubes from the membrane of cells. These
"nanowires" made of "quantum dots" - particles of
copper iridium sulphide and zinc sulphide which
glow and conduct electricity - can replace less
compatible artificial wiring implanted within the
human body. [4].
"In our system, as
various materials including wires and particles
can be coated with biological fat molecule, it is
highly biocompatible with the body," says Tanaka.
"And as the material is hollow, like nano-sized
straw, it might be useful as artificial blood
vessels. The material can transfer not only
electrical information but also various
molecules."
In the information world, such
bio-tech promises more efficient alternatives to
conventional computer hard disk drives that
usually have two neodymium magnets. Neodymium
magnets, comprising a mixture of neodymium, iron,
and boron, are considered the strongest magnets in
the world.
The neodymium magnets propel
the actuator - the device that moves to read and
write data. Using magnetic force in the data
processing movement increases long life of the
drive, instead of earlier generation of
motor-powered hard drives.
With current
research, tiny bacteria could be basis for the
next generation of storage and processing devices
to share the dizzily multiplying information
oceans in the Internet-connected world.
Communication technology giants such as
Cisco, IBM and Hewlett-Packard estimate that, by
the year 2015, total information content worldwide
grow from around 1.8 zettabytes in 2012 to about
7.9 zettabytes - or about 18 million US Libraries
of Congress. One zettabyte = one million petabytes
= one million GBs or gigabytes. Google processes
about 24 petabytes of data per day, and one
zettabyte can contain content of about 350 billion
DVDs.
But are such microscopic devices
poised to do the donkey's work in carrying
mountainous data, life-saving medical aids,
computers and electronics based on biology a 100%
certainty? Will scientists in the 22nd century
discover that bacteria too has intelligence and
feelings and dreams? Would bacteria-rights
activists be functioning as normally in year 2112
as animal rights activists do now? And how long
before Dell, Lenovo, Compaq, Intel and their ilk
sell bacterial PCs, notebooks and processors?
Staniland expects to see these synthetic
biology technologies in public use within the next
15 years. "I cannot say about the cost of these
devices, but research is always expensive," she
says, "As technology develops, they will be more
precise and hopefully cheap". Orville and Wilbur
Wright too may not have anticipated space shuttles
and transoceanic airliners when they tested their
biplane glider in 1900.
More immediately
certain is the British-Japanese project feeding
growing global interest in biological computers
and electronics. Another project declared
successful earlier this February involved the
Scripps Research Institute in California, the
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology [5] and
Professor Ehud Keinans team building a computer
using bio-molecules and DNA.
Keinan
explained how the DNA-based computers merged
biology and computer science: "In contrast to
electronic computers, there are computing machines
in which all four components of traditional
computers [hardware, software, input, and output]
are nothing but molecules ... for example, all
biological systems and even entire living
organisms are such computers. Every one of us is a
biomolecular computer, a machine in which all four
components are molecules that 'talk' to one
another logically"
This concept is similar
but the characteristics are completely different
with our nano-tubes and designed DNA structure,
says Tanaka. "By the combination of DNA and our
novel techniques, highly complicated 3D structure
devices for various information transferring can
be made in the future".
Essentially,
bio-tech scientists such as Tanaka, Staniland and
Keinan are working to produce technologies
duplicating the technology cells of living use to
store and process information while performing
various bodily functions. In effect, the idea is
to use billions of years of evolution in the
machinery of living beings to create nature-based
super technology.
Sarah Staniland and
Masayoshi Tanaka are from a department that covers
astronomy as well as physics, and their work based
on arrays of bacterial magnets could widen the
scope and depth of technology similar to an array
of linked telescopes helping the study of stars
and galaxies.
It's a multiplier power
effect, with some of the smallest living creatures
in nature potentially serving a gigantic
information-creating world whose content doubles
every 24 months.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
