Researchers harness viruses to split water

[n2doc]

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of MIT researchers has found a novel way to mimic the process by which plants use the power of sunlight to split water and make chemical fuel to power their growth. In this case, the team used a modified virus as a kind of biological scaffold that can assemble the nanoscale components needed to split a water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen atoms.

Splitting water is one way to solve the basic problem of solar energy: It's only available when the sun shines. By using sunlight to make hydrogen from water, the hydrogen can then be stored and used at any time to generate electricity using a fuel cell, or to make liquid fuels (or be used directly) for cars and trucks.

Other researchers have made systems that use electricity, which can be provided by solar panels, to split water molecules, but the new biologically based system skips the intermediate steps and uses sunlight to power the reaction directly. The advance is described in a paper published on April 11 in Nature Nanotechnology.

The team, led by Angela Belcher, the Germeshausen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biological Engineering, engineered a common, harmless bacterial virus called M13 so that it would attract and bind with molecules of a catalyst (the team used iridium oxide) and a biological pigment (zinc porphyrins). The viruses became wire-like devices that could very efficiently split the oxygen from water molecules.

more

http://www.physorg.com/news190207460.html

[bain_sidhe]

1. Great idea! Considering that the human body is about 70% water...

and that a virus is a self-replicating organism, what could possibly go wrong? :eyes:

[jberryhill]

2. "to mimic the process by which plants use the power of sunlight to split water"

Yes.

Stay away from plants, or you will dry up.

[glitch]

4. Ice-9!

:evilgrin: still missing Kurt Vonnegut

[Confusious]

6. First off,

It needs sunlight to split water. You seen your insides lately? If so, see a doctor about that, it could be serious.

I don't really have second. That's a monumental fail right there.

[bain_sidhe]

7. Aww, come on, haven't you ever heard of mutations??

Serious readers of science fiction know, self perpetuating/replicating organic "fixes" ALWAYS mutate, go out of control, and destroy Life As We Know It. Haven't you ever seen "Mimic"?? Or read, for instance, David Marusek's "Counting Heads"? (Just off the top of my head - there are bunches of sf novels that take a gene-geneered "solution" going out of control as their starting point.)

Oh, and skin cells have water in them too. So there.

[JohnWxy]

3. Fascinating. Recommended!

[tinrobot]

5. Very interesting, but there is caveat

From the article:

"There is a daunting combination of problems to be solved before this or any other artificial photosynthetic system could actually be useful for energy conversion." To be cost-competitive with other approaches to solar power, he says, the system would need to be at least 10 times more efficient than natural photosynthesis, be able to repeat the reaction a billion times, and use less expensive materials. "This is unlikely to happen in the near future," he says. "Nevertheless, the design idea illustrated in this paper could ultimately help with an important piece of the puzzle."

So, it's a long way off, but not impossible.