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Future Batteries Could be Made Out of Viruses
Viruses, nature’s microscopic zombies, can be selectively engineered to function as a scaffold for materials used in battery electrodes.
The global reliance on batteries has grown rapidly over the years.
Batteries store energy for later use in a wide variety of products, from flashlights to basic electronic devices to emerging technologies such as electric cars.
As such, there is an impending need for better, reliable higher energy density batteries.
Viruses, one of nature’s most predominant and unique microorganisms might hold the key to more efficient batteries of the future.
Using Viruses for Battery Manufacture.
In 2009, Angela Belcher, a professor of bioengineering at MIT was invited to the White House to demo a small battery for President Obama.
This wasn’t a normal battery. Belcher had used viruses to assemble the electrodes of a lithium-ion battery which was able to power an LED.
Her main inspiration came from studying organisms that can grow incredibly strong structures by using chemicals found in nature.
For instance, the abalone snail builds a strong shell by gathering calcium molecules found on the mineral-rich ocean floor. The intricate biological mechanisms that govern the process are all encoded by the snail’s DNA which has evolved to perform this task.
Theoretically, it would be possible to tweak the DNA of an organism so that it can attract conductive materials such as gold or copper; more like expanding biology’s toolkit to work with new materials.
Viruses are the perfect candidates. Their DNA is easy to alter and they already exist at the nanoscale.
Belcher started experimenting with the M13 bacteriophage. A bacteriophage is a virus that only infects bacteria, so it is harmless to humans. The circular genome of a bacteriophage is relatively easy to manipulate.
By genetically engineering bits of M13 bacteriophage DNA, Belcher created a virus that encodes proteins that can latch onto metals that act as…
