MIT Scientists Create Virus-Based Battery

[exfileme]

MIT researchers have gone and done something really wacky: genetically engineer viruses to build a lithium-ion battery.

MIT Scientists Create Virus-Based Battery : Read more

 

[kyeana]

Virus's and batteries... never in a million years would i have put those two together...

 

[Pongobongo]

Imagine if this virus could be made to self-replicate. Talk about easy mass-production!

 

[Guest]

It's been done, remember the Electric plasmid from Bioshock? :3

 

[tiredwolf]

for some reason I keep thinking of the movie " I am Legend" . But that is pretty cool. So long as it doesn't doom mankind

 

[Pei-chen]

What if the virus mutates and changes the voltage or leaked?

 

[Mr_Man]

Captain Trips.

 

[tenor77]

Yeah I seen movies about this. It never worked out well for the black guy.

 

[bourgeoisdude]

[citation][nom]tiredwolf[/nom]for some reason I keep thinking of the movie " I am Legend" . But that is pretty cool. So long as it doesn't doom mankind[/citation]

Funney I was thinking the same thing...

 

[Guest]

What if the virus mutates and changes the voltage or leaked?
Viruses are only capable of replicating inside another organism, in this case a bacterium. As long as there's no bacteria in the battery, which seems to be the case, the viruses will be inactive.

 

[solymnar]

Exactly so Aorus. Additionally the more this virus is customized to build battery anodes and cathodes the less it will be able to successfully replicate without high concentrations of the needed building and binding materials it was designed to use. Your average bacteria isn't exactly loaded with iron and nickle-phosphate.

The important part is that while they are trying to make intentional performance adjustments they can also run experiments to let the virus "adjust itself" and see which ones yield better results and why.

AKA they can take a batch of this virus, cause random point mutations, and then separate them out and put them in a battery building environment. Most will preform worse or similar to what they started with. But some mutations will be advantageous. Wash rinse repeat and continue selecting for the best performance. Not unlike breeding horses, let nature take care of some of the work.

 

[m3kt3k]

We can only hope this leads to a zombie invasion. But slow zombies I hate running.

 

[Guest]

Kinda reminds me of a game, Homeworld: Cataclysm, where there is that bio-mechanical virus that infects everything and transforms its host into itself.

 

[norbs]

Yea this does make me feel a bit uneasy. I'm sure they take precautions but it's just seems like a matter of time before someone makes something that they wish they hadn't.

 

[squatchman]

Sounds like god-less heathen talk to me.

 

[tenor77]

[citation][nom]m3kt3k[/nom]We can only hope this leads to a zombie invasion. But slow zombies I hate running.[/citation]

I KNEW all those rounds of Left4Dead would come in handy someday.

 

[manicmalki]

Hummm I am thinking Matrix. However I would very disgruntled if every time I touched any electronics I discharged a fair amount of voltage.

 

[megabuster]

You can think of human manipulated virus as nano robots, which are programmed to do a specific task. Same principles of mutation or error in programing code can occur in either case.

 

[hurbt]

[citation][nom]megabuster[/nom]You can think of human manipulated virus as nano robots, which are programmed to do a specific task. Same principles of mutation or error in programing code can occur in either case.[/citation]

Can you say, Cylons??

 

[solymnar]

A virus customized to use a higher concentration of materials than what exists in nature has a significantly lower chance of mutating into anything that could be destructive let alone functional outside its specialized environment compared to a normal virus that constantly reinvents itself to infect hosts and replicate as fast and efficiently as possible.

In general the more specialized they make this virus the lower the chances are for it to be remotely functional outside its special tailored environment.

Not that the zombie comments and theories aren't amusing. I do rather enjoy L4D, RE, etc. myself.

But all those stories are typically based on viruses that were already dangerous to humans and engineered to be weapons-grade effective etc.

Not something that started as harmless and was engineered to work in a non biological setting. It would have a better chance of becoming a "replicator" (stargate) than anything else and adapt to consume other materials besides the metals it was selected for.

Which may cause something like this:

http/www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0dYPnui3rM