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Researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) of Australia claim to have taken protein filaments produced by bacteria and engineered them to be able to create electricity from the water in the air.
One of the researchers, Lorenzo Travaglini, said of the work “…we genetically engineered a fiber using the bacteria E. coli… We modified the DNA of E. coli so that the bacteria not only produced the proteins that it needed to survive but also built the specific protein we had designed, which we then engineered and assembled into nanowires in the lab.”
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Excerpt from interestingengineering.com
Researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia have successfully engineered protein filaments produced by bacteria so that they can conduct electricity and even harness it using moisture from the air. This interdisciplinary research, comprising protein engineering and nanoelectronics, could one day help scientists develop ‘green electronics,’ a university press release said.
…The UNSW team furthered the research on bacterial nanowires, which showed that when haem molecules are arranged closely together, they can also perform electron transfer. Travaglini and his team integrated haem into their engineered filaments, hoping that the electrons would jump between the haem molecules if placed sufficiently close to each other.
By measuring the conductance of the filaments in the presence and absence of haem molecules, the researchers confirmed that the iron-based molecule was making the protein conductive.
During their extensive tests, the researchers found that the electric current was stronger when the ambient conditions were between 20 and 30 percent humidity.
When the tests were repeated with increasing amounts of conductive material sandwiched between the electrodes, the researchers confirmed that humidity created a charge gradient across the material and generated additional current without applying additional potential.
The researchers then devised a humidity sensor that generated electric current even when one exhaled on it.
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