Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. Can we figured we'd start off today
Speaker 1: talking about our favorite electricity monsters. Robert, what's your favorite
Speaker 1: electricity monster? Oh? You know, my, my, my, just gut
Speaker 1: instinct answers to go with Blanca from Street Fighter. You know,
Speaker 1: he's the green skinned and I was, I was. I
Speaker 1: looked into this a little bit. I was never sure
Speaker 1: why he had green skin. Apparently some alleged backstory involving
Speaker 1: chlorophyll um, but I don't know. It ends up with
Speaker 1: he's like a beast creature, a beast man with green
Speaker 1: skin and like bright orange hair, wearing board shorts, wearing
Speaker 1: board shorts and just kind of doing this this, this
Speaker 1: kind of hulking, uh pose bent over, and then he
Speaker 1: can produce electricity. Basically has the powers since he's kind
Speaker 1: of been kind of a you know, a mildum of
Speaker 1: various Amazonian things. He has the powers of an electric eagle,
Speaker 1: and so he can shock his opponents that way. That's
Speaker 1: a good one. Uh. There there are a few really
Speaker 1: good electricity movies. By really good, I mean really bad
Speaker 1: from the nineteen eighties and nineties. Did you ever see
Speaker 1: the Pulse? I don't think I ever did. I think
Speaker 1: there was another horror movie called Pulse, which was about
Speaker 1: something else. So this one was about. Uh, it's like
Speaker 1: some family living in a house and like a regular
Speaker 1: suburban neighborhood in California in the nineteen eighties, and an
Speaker 1: evil burst of electricity goes throughout goes out through the mains. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't remember if there's like an evil storm or
Speaker 1: like an alien arrives or something. But for some reason,
Speaker 1: there's this pulse of of killer electricity and it goes
Speaker 1: into their house and it turns all the appliances against them,
Speaker 1: so the TV starts trying to kill him and everything,
Speaker 1: a real maximum over drive scenario. But it's like it's
Speaker 1: sold as like the the malevolence is delivered to actually
Speaker 1: through the electrical wires the wrong voltage or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess. So, yeah, I was thinking about this, like,
Speaker 1: what are some other examples of electric creatures or humanoids?
Speaker 1: And I mean, obviously I thought of of of electric
Speaker 1: Christopher Lambert from from Mortal Kombat another fighting game. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but so many, so often is the case you
Speaker 1: see individuals with some sort of pyrotechnic mobility, you know.
Speaker 1: Like one of a film that we've talked about before
Speaker 1: has been the Toby Hooper film, in which Brad Dorriff
Speaker 1: played a like a pyromaniac who could catch things on
Speaker 1: fire with his brain. He's got like like pyro kinesis,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't want it. He's not like a you know,
Speaker 1: a villain out there like Piro and the X Men,
Speaker 1: just throwing fireballs wherever he wants. It's more like every
Speaker 1: he's kind of like the Hulk. He's like fire Hulk.
Speaker 1: Every time he gets upset, he starts catching things on fire.
Speaker 1: But he also like burns the heck out of himself too,
Speaker 1: which wasn't a nice twist. And of course Brad Dorriff
Speaker 1: is wonderful and in that film there are at least
Speaker 1: portions of it where he's it's it's a rare film
Speaker 1: or Brad Dorriff is the lead and he's sort of
Speaker 1: playing a regular human in some of the scenes. So
Speaker 1: it's interesting to see. But but so often is the
Speaker 1: case you see fire based powers in these characters and
Speaker 1: creatures as opposed to electric based powers. And it's kind
Speaker 1: of weird when you think about it, because, as we'll
Speaker 1: discussing this episode, electricity is more tied in with biology
Speaker 1: than fire. And even from the human perspective perspective, you
Speaker 1: know who among us has not harnessed the power of
Speaker 1: electricity by by walking across a carpeted floor in the
Speaker 1: wintertime and then shocking somebody with a touch. You do
Speaker 1: that on purpose? I have in the past done it
Speaker 1: on purpose. Yes, yeah, but it's pretty not announce of
Speaker 1: guilt on your face. Well, one of one of the
Speaker 1: things I do like to do when it gets cold,
Speaker 1: when the conditions are just right, have my son go
Speaker 1: down a curly slide, build up static electricity and then
Speaker 1: give me a high. I've on the way down, and
Speaker 1: at times it has been stiff enough to like leave
Speaker 1: a numbness in my hands, like when you feel it
Speaker 1: in your wrist kind of in the bone. That's creepy,
Speaker 1: real shocking power. I don't know if there's ever been
Speaker 1: like an actually really scary electricity monster movie. The other
Speaker 1: main one I was thinking of is one of my
Speaker 1: favorite cheesy mid mid career West Craven movies, which is shocker.
Speaker 1: I think that's from nineteen or so, and it's got
Speaker 1: Mitch Poleggi or Poleggi, the guy who plays Skinner on
Speaker 1: the X Files. Uh, he plays the villain. He's like
Speaker 1: a serial killer who does some like evil black magic
Speaker 1: ritual to turn himself into electricity after he gets killed
Speaker 1: in the electric chair. That's right. I remember saying I
Speaker 1: never saw it, but I remember seeing the boxes for it,
Speaker 1: and he's in an electric chair on the You should
Speaker 1: see it sometime. It's a laugh riot and he's Oh,
Speaker 1: he's just like acting, I mean, beat galaxies beyond normal
Speaker 1: levels of acting is uh. Would you say it's an
Speaker 1: electric performance? I would say he is a live wire.
Speaker 1: But yeah, So I think you're right about the idea
Speaker 1: that maybe electric monsters should be more biologically intuitive than
Speaker 1: pyrokinetic or fire throwing monsters or even fire breathing dragons,
Speaker 1: because you know, it shouldn't come as any surprise that
Speaker 1: the use of electricity by living organisms predates the technological
Speaker 1: uses predates you know, Tesla and medicine or even Franklin
Speaker 1: and Galvani and all that, Like all kinds of animals
Speaker 1: use electricity in various ways. Now they're the really noticeable
Speaker 1: charismatic uses of electricity, like how sharks and rays have
Speaker 1: electro sensory organs known as the ampullae of Lorenzini, which
Speaker 1: they used to sense very faint electric currents transmitted through
Speaker 1: water by potential prey animals. And then you've got the
Speaker 1: electrogenic organisms that like generally aquatic organisms that emit strong
Speaker 1: electric currents, maybe too stun prey or two deploys a
Speaker 1: defensive weapon. And these would include things like electric fish,
Speaker 1: electric catfish, and raise. Yeah. Yeah, the electric eel is
Speaker 1: certainly the electric animal par excellence. Uh, though it's always
Speaker 1: worth reminding everyone, and it's not really an eel. It
Speaker 1: has more it's more related to a catfish. Oh, I
Speaker 1: don't think I knew that. Well, I didn't know they
Speaker 1: were electric catfish, but I didn't know the eel was one, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you look at it, if you you know,
Speaker 1: fortunate enough to see one in a tank somewhere or
Speaker 1: in the wild, Uh, you know you're gonna notice that
Speaker 1: it doesn't really look like an eel. It's uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a very curious looking creature. Have you ever
Speaker 1: seen a de fleshed eel skull. Oh, I don't know
Speaker 1: that I have it is one of them. Is usually
Speaker 1: don't leave them on when I go sushi. You should.
Speaker 1: You should look up an eel skull. Sometimes it might
Speaker 1: be different for different species, but at least some eel
Speaker 1: skulls are like the most metal thing in nature. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: But anyway, we today we wanted to to think about
Speaker 1: electric organisms. But instead of focusing on these larger organisms
Speaker 1: that use electricity, may be in a sensory capacity or
Speaker 1: as a weapon of some sort, we wanted to go
Speaker 1: down to zoom in with the microscope and to take
Speaker 1: a look at the world of micro organisms that deal
Speaker 1: in the currency of the Holy fire, the amber, the electricity.
Speaker 1: So I just wanted to start by saying by giving
Speaker 1: a shout out that I got the idea to do
Speaker 1: this episode after I read a really interesting article a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago in the New York Times by
Speaker 1: previous Stuff to blow your mind. Guest Carl Zimmer, Oh, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a tremendous episode. It was great to chatting
Speaker 1: with him. I'd love to have him back on the show.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we should see about that if we get him
Speaker 1: back on the show, then he becomes a friend of
Speaker 1: the show. That's the way it works two appearances. Two
Speaker 1: appearances make you a friend of the show, so just
Speaker 1: one is previous guest. I almost said friend of the show,
Speaker 1: but I didn't want to presume. I think those are
Speaker 1: the rules. Yes, uh so, of course electricity. You know,
Speaker 1: it's generally thought of as the flow of electrons. You
Speaker 1: might have other ways of defining it. You could maybe
Speaker 1: define it other ways in terms of electrical potential, like
Speaker 1: a positive or negative charge. But generally you've got current.
Speaker 1: If you've got electrons flowing that, you think of that
Speaker 1: as some form of electricity. And there are ways in
Speaker 1: which the metabolism of our bodies could be considered electric.
Speaker 1: For example, what is actually happening when we breathe. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I've ever thought of it quite this
Speaker 1: way before, but I was reading an article in New
Speaker 1: Scientists from July which quotes the U c l A
Speaker 1: microbiologists Kenneth Nielsen in characterizing the most basic biochemistry of
Speaker 1: life as a flow of electrons. So basically, think about
Speaker 1: it like this. You eat carbon based compounds, you take
Speaker 1: in that chemical energy, and that's gonna be molecules like sugars,
Speaker 1: and these molecules, these carbon based compounds like sugars, have
Speaker 1: excess electrons, and then cells in the body break down
Speaker 1: those compounds and they pass on the extra electrons through
Speaker 1: a series of chemical reactions that power the body, and
Speaker 1: part by making a dinascene triphosphate or a t P,
Speaker 1: which is the chemical energy transport molecule that that captures
Speaker 1: the energy obtained through the breakdown of food and then
Speaker 1: uses it to power things that happen inside ourselves. I've
Speaker 1: I've sometimes seen a TP characterized as an energy storage molecule,
Speaker 1: but that's not quite right. That would be more like
Speaker 1: fats or sugars or something. A TP is like it's
Speaker 1: like a car for energy, you know, it carries it
Speaker 1: from one place to another in the cell. And apparently
Speaker 1: the flow of electrons is an indispensable part of making
Speaker 1: that a TP that powers our cells. But eventually the
Speaker 1: extra electrons, since they're flowing, they've got to go somewhere
Speaker 1: at the end of this chain of chemical reactions. You
Speaker 1: can't just keep building up extra electrons in the body
Speaker 1: until you become a humanliding jar or you become the
Speaker 1: guy from Shocker, and you just electrocute people by touching them.
Speaker 1: So you have to pass on the electrons onto a
Speaker 1: molecule that will accept them. And in our case, that
Speaker 1: molecule is oxygen. You breathe in the oxygen, and that
Speaker 1: oxygen we breathe in goes around to the body, to
Speaker 1: the cells, and it accepts those extra electrons that are
Speaker 1: the waste product of our metabolism. Uh, and it bonds
Speaker 1: with carbon molecules and then you breathe out this waste
Speaker 1: product as CEO two. And to quote from this researcher
Speaker 1: Kenneth Nielsen, as as quoted in in New Scientists, that's
Speaker 1: the way we make all our energy, and it's the
Speaker 1: same for every organism on this planet. Electrons must flow
Speaker 1: in order for energy to be gained. This is why
Speaker 1: when someone suffocates another person, they're dead within minutes. You
Speaker 1: have stopped the supply of oxygen, so the electrons can
Speaker 1: no longer flow. So choking somebody is kind of like
Speaker 1: it's like putting a resistor in the electric circuit. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean this is all getting down to the fact
Speaker 1: that we're all essentially bioelectric organisms. Yeah, that's exactly right,
Speaker 1: and it's not just us like this is basically the
Speaker 1: rule for all kinds of life forms, from humans to
Speaker 1: coconut crabs to lots of single celled organisms. Pretty much
Speaker 1: every organism needs to create an electron flow by taking
Speaker 1: in food with that excess electrons and then running that
Speaker 1: through a series of chemical reactions to extract usable energy
Speaker 1: for cells, and then dumping those electrons out into some
Speaker 1: kind of electron accepting waste bucket like oxygen molecules. And
Speaker 1: this is even true for bacteria, where for many species
Speaker 1: oxygen must be present as this terminal receptor for the
Speaker 1: electrons at the end of the metabolic line. But there
Speaker 1: are some prokaryotic organisms, single celled organisms that can't or
Speaker 1: don't use oxygen, and these are known as anaerobic bacteria,
Speaker 1: and they live in places where oxygen doesn't reach or
Speaker 1: where oxygen is very limited. And the examples of this
Speaker 1: might be places like deep in the sediment along a river,
Speaker 1: or buried in a sea bed, or even ever a
Speaker 1: deep underground in oil wells. I mean, try to imagine
Speaker 1: that that far underground, that like life is thriving in
Speaker 1: some way. We've also talked about them thriving in some
Speaker 1: human created sewer environments. Absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah, all all
Speaker 1: these environments, especially these environments that are cut off from
Speaker 1: the surface by by mud or sediment or even by
Speaker 1: vast expanses of dead rock. So if the electrons have
Speaker 1: to flow for life to go on, how do these
Speaker 1: anaerobic bacteria survive without oxygen molecules to accept the excess
Speaker 1: electrons at the end of the metabolism and basically to
Speaker 1: breathe out. How you know, where do the electrons go
Speaker 1: when they're done with them? So here's where we get
Speaker 1: to a bacterial discovery story. So in the mid nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: I think around nineteen seven, the American microbiologist Derek Lovely
Speaker 1: was out pulling up samples of sediment from the Potomac River.
Speaker 1: And one of these samples from the Potomac River, it
Speaker 1: was around Washington, d C contained one of these weird
Speaker 1: single celled organisms. It was a bacterium called geo bacter
Speaker 1: Metalla reducens. And like other bacteria, this bacterium would be
Speaker 1: again the electron flow of its metabolism by consuming organic
Speaker 1: compounds that have excess electrons, for example, ethanol, which is alcohol.
Speaker 1: So there's some ethanol in its environment, it can eat that,
Speaker 1: but it would end its metabolism by passing the excess
Speaker 1: electrons off into iron oxides, which are rust. So this
Speaker 1: is a life form that can survive by eating grain
Speaker 1: alcohol and breathing out rusty iron. Yeah. I've read and
Speaker 1: lovely um some some of his papers that when they're
Speaker 1: working within the lab they essentially just feeded vinegar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's all it requires. Wow. So if you have
Speaker 1: to breathe out into rusty iron, would you rather survive
Speaker 1: by eating only grain alcohol or by eating only vinegar? Um?
Speaker 1: I feel like vinegar from for me, vinegar would probably
Speaker 1: be healthier for you. For me, that's my personal choice.
Speaker 1: But I am I'm not a microbe. So just as
Speaker 1: an interesting side note, in this process, the bacteria Karl
Speaker 1: Zimmern the Sinness article. The bacteria help transform the regular
Speaker 1: old iron oxides, the rust particles in their environment into
Speaker 1: the naturally fair magnetic mineral known as magnetite. So that's like,
Speaker 1: you know, the strong natural magnetic rock you might find
Speaker 1: in sediments around the world, and these bacteria helped produce
Speaker 1: that magnetite by by by pushing off these electrons into it,
Speaker 1: which sort of magnetizes it. Now we've been speaking kind
Speaker 1: of metaphorically by calling this bacterial process breathing, because it's
Speaker 1: not breathing in the exact same way we do. Like,
Speaker 1: the bacteria don't have respiratory systems with lungs and alveola
Speaker 1: and all that. We breathe by sucking in oxygen and
Speaker 1: then transporting it around our bodies to the cells where
Speaker 1: it needs to go, and then breathing out the molecular
Speaker 1: waste products of our metabolism through the same gas exchange
Speaker 1: system in the lungs. But the bacteria don't have lungs,
Speaker 1: They don't suck rust particles into the body to allow
Speaker 1: the electrons to attach to them. Uh, and so what's
Speaker 1: going on there? Like according to Carl Zimmer's article, it
Speaker 1: took Lovely and his colleague Dr. John Stoltz in their
Speaker 1: labs years to figure out how this respiration process was
Speaker 1: taking place. And what they discovered was that instead of
Speaker 1: like sucking in the rust particles and breathing them out,
Speaker 1: Geobacter exhaled by putting out electric wires. Yeah, this is amazing.
Speaker 1: And of course, when we're saying wires we're talking about
Speaker 1: micro filaments. Yeah, but they do, in a way function
Speaker 1: like electric wires. I mean, they're they're conductive. They are long,
Speaker 1: filamentous kind of conductive material that is there to transmit
Speaker 1: a flow of electrons between potentials. So you've got to
Speaker 1: build up of electrons as a waste product in the bacterium,
Speaker 1: and then you've got a lower potential thing out there
Speaker 1: that can accept them, like maybe a deposit of iron oxide,
Speaker 1: and you pump the electrons out through this wire to
Speaker 1: the iron oxide outside the cell. Yeah, and we're these
Speaker 1: things are tiny too. We're talking about like three nanometers
Speaker 1: in diameter. Yeah, extremely too. Though they can get pretty long. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can get pretty long in some cases. And then
Speaker 1: we'll get into other species later. But there are species
Speaker 1: with with with larger filaments. Yeah. Uh So, when you're
Speaker 1: a geobacter and you since the presence of iron oxide
Speaker 1: and your surroundings, basically what it seems like you do
Speaker 1: is you sprout out these microscopic little filaments, each one
Speaker 1: known as a pealis plural peely and bacterial peely are
Speaker 1: fascinating in other respects too, because, for one thing, they
Speaker 1: play a role in the bacterial process known as horizontal
Speaker 1: gene transfer, and we've done a podcast on this before.
Speaker 1: This is a really interesting phenomenon. Basically, bacteria, they don't
Speaker 1: have sex in the way that like sexually reproducing eukaryotic
Speaker 1: animals do. Write they reproduce a sexually, meaning they make
Speaker 1: act copies of themselves in a process called binary fission.
Speaker 1: They split off and create two daughter cells, not by
Speaker 1: mating with other individuals and combining their DNA to create
Speaker 1: an ad mixed offspring. But despite this, despite them not
Speaker 1: having sexual reproduction, bacteria do engage in something kind of
Speaker 1: like sex, and this is this process of horizontal gene
Speaker 1: transfer where bacteria can meet up and share genetic material
Speaker 1: between one another. And this doesn't always work out great
Speaker 1: for us, because, for example, it is one of the
Speaker 1: main methods by which bacteria acquire d NA for antibiotic resistance.
Speaker 1: We just did an episode of our other podcast, Invention,
Speaker 1: about the invention of antibiotics, and antibiotics are a you know,
Speaker 1: a miraculous invention of the twentieth century, but one of
Speaker 1: the big problems with them is that over time, the
Speaker 1: diseases that we're fighting get better at overcoming these medicines. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think. I think the way we put it in
Speaker 1: that episode is with with penicilla and and other antibiotics,
Speaker 1: we're stealing a weapon from the you know, the eons
Speaker 1: old war between a fungi and bacterium and uh, and
Speaker 1: when we've stole the weapon, but the but the war
Speaker 1: continues on and the the the the evolution of their
Speaker 1: warfare continues, and in the way we use the fungal
Speaker 1: weapon sort of accelerates the arms race, like provoked. It's
Speaker 1: in a Cold war style, like provokes the other side
Speaker 1: to uh make go with a with a build up,
Speaker 1: you know, an arms build up, when that seems to
Speaker 1: be what's happening on the bacterial side. Now we stole
Speaker 1: like a fungal catapult. But now we're quickly advancing into
Speaker 1: the age of where a fungal tribute SHA would be
Speaker 1: a more appropriate that's right. We have to find those
Speaker 1: those fungal tributes or develop them ourselves. I hope we do.
Speaker 1: But for the but for the bacteria to share their
Speaker 1: own tribute shape plans. What one of the things they
Speaker 1: do is this horizontal transfer process. Specifically this process known
Speaker 1: as conjugation, where to bacteria meet up and they're like,
Speaker 1: let's hook up, and they extend a peliss between the
Speaker 1: donor bacterium and the recipient bacterium, and this little hair
Speaker 1: like filament hooks them together so they can share. Plasmids,
Speaker 1: which are little segments of DNA, and peely also enhance
Speaker 1: the virulence of bacteria by helping them bind two cells
Speaker 1: in the host body. And this is the case in
Speaker 1: disease causing strains of bacteria like Streptococcus or an e. Coli.
Speaker 1: The plist can kind of hook them onto the cells
Speaker 1: lining your the inside of your throat or in your gut,
Speaker 1: or wherever it is they're trying to infect. But in
Speaker 1: the case of Geobacter, the researchers who worked with Geobacter
Speaker 1: originally concluded that the peely we're being used for another
Speaker 1: purpose entirely, and that purpose was the off routing of
Speaker 1: electricity into electro receptive molecules in the environment. So to
Speaker 1: picture this as a again this is going to be
Speaker 1: a very crude metaphor, but imagine if you were to
Speaker 1: breathe instead of by sucking oxygen into your lungs and
Speaker 1: exhaling CEO two, by shooting electric wires out of your
Speaker 1: mouths into the environment, which would then attach to the
Speaker 1: toaster and the TV and pour waste electricity out of
Speaker 1: your lungs into those appliances. Oh that's pretty good. That
Speaker 1: sounds like a good electric alien creature for a future
Speaker 1: film or a past film. I mean done. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I can imagine Dan Ackroyd playing a character that
Speaker 1: does this. Uh, you know, back in the nineties or so. Oh,
Speaker 1: you know they're one of those nineties like a kind
Speaker 1: of grimy computer monster movies. What was that one that
Speaker 1: Jamie Lee Curtis was in about like a killer computer
Speaker 1: virus that like just puts gross wires everywhere. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: this was I think Donald Sutherland was in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not a ship or something. It was really bad.
Speaker 1: It was like a sort of it was kind of
Speaker 1: a take on the thing, but with this this cybernetic
Speaker 1: blend of like wires and flesh. Uh. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: a computer virus that decides that Earth is that the
Speaker 1: humans are a pathogen and the virus, I think pathogeny.
Speaker 1: It's called virus. Yeah. And I should note as a
Speaker 1: as a follow up to what I was just saying
Speaker 1: about the bacterial peely, it's not fully settled whether the
Speaker 1: geobacter actually use peely as their electric wires, or whether
Speaker 1: they use peely exclusively. Karl Zimmer's article notes that the
Speaker 1: Yale physicist and Nikkil S. Malvankar and colleagues believe that
Speaker 1: instead the bacteria use dedicated wires made out of organic
Speaker 1: compounds called cytochromes. But the fact that Geobacter does pump
Speaker 1: electrons out through biological wires of some sort doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be in dispute. It's just there are different ideas
Speaker 1: about to what extent they're using different structures as the wires.
Speaker 1: All right, on that note, we're going to take a
Speaker 1: quick break, but we'll be right back. All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: So we've been talking about the idea of electroactive bacteria,
Speaker 1: bacteria that in some metaphorical since, breathe by releasing excess
Speaker 1: electrons that are the the end product of their metabolism
Speaker 1: into things in their environment, like little deposits of iron oxide.
Speaker 1: And they do this by sticking these wires out of
Speaker 1: their cells that connect to things, and they can pump
Speaker 1: the electricity out through those wires. But it doesn't stop there,
Speaker 1: because researchers have also discovered that in some cases, the
Speaker 1: electric wires put out by metal reducing bacteria like Geobacter
Speaker 1: would not just go out into iron oxide in the
Speaker 1: environment or into other metals in the environment, but sometimes
Speaker 1: these wires would go out and connect to other species
Speaker 1: of electroactive bacteria. And so the same way that Geobacter
Speaker 1: metaphorically breathes by putting out electron low, some species of
Speaker 1: bacteria can metaphorically eat by taking in electron flow, and
Speaker 1: this energy intake allows the bacteria to convert carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: into methane, kind of like how plants use direct energy
Speaker 1: from the sunlight to power the chemical reaction that turns
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide from the air into the sugars and the
Speaker 1: carbon compounds that make up the bodies of plants. When
Speaker 1: I'm sure I've said in a million times on the show,
Speaker 1: but one of my favorite crazy facts about plants is
Speaker 1: they make their bodies from the air. They don't make
Speaker 1: their bodies from you know, the dirt or something, and
Speaker 1: that it's it's the carbon from the carbon dioxide in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere that becomes the wood beings of air and
Speaker 1: sun basically totally well and to be fair and like
Speaker 1: water from the ground and other minerals and stuff, but
Speaker 1: primarily yes, primarily of air and sun. So yeah, so
Speaker 1: if these bacterial species that that do this, if they
Speaker 1: pair up, they can form these like cross networks of
Speaker 1: underground bacterial wires where one species feeds another with its
Speaker 1: waist electricity. So I was reading a BBC article on
Speaker 1: electroactive bacteria by an author named Jasmine Fox Skelly, and
Speaker 1: this article mentioned that it was not long after loveliest
Speaker 1: discovery of the electrical properties of geobacter that the u
Speaker 1: C l A microbiologist Kenneth Nielsen, who was quoted in
Speaker 1: that article earlier describing all of you know, the respiration
Speaker 1: of life is the flow of electrons before Nielsen found
Speaker 1: another electronic screening bacterium, this one in the Oneida Lake
Speaker 1: of New York State and published his findings in the
Speaker 1: journal Science. And this was a very similar story, except
Speaker 1: the bacterium here was not geobacter. It was shoe and
Speaker 1: Ella on identis uh and and much the same way
Speaker 1: that the geobacter metaphorically breathes iron oxide, this bacterium breathe
Speaker 1: this oxygen when it's available, but when it's not, it
Speaker 1: breathes manganese oxide, pumping electrons out into the external deposits
Speaker 1: of the compound, though it can also pump electrons out
Speaker 1: into other metals like iron but um. Unlike Geobacter, which
Speaker 1: uses some form of wire to conduct electricity, quote, she
Speaker 1: and Ella appears to shuttle electrons out of their cells
Speaker 1: using transport molecules called flavians and stepping stone proteins embedded
Speaker 1: in the outer membrane called cytochromes. So there we've got
Speaker 1: this cytochromes being involved again. So we're starting to build
Speaker 1: up a picture that there are many different ways for
Speaker 1: bacteria to kind of breathe electrically or be electro active
Speaker 1: in one way or another. And these tend to be
Speaker 1: bacteria that that don't have access to air, or don't
Speaker 1: or only do this win they don't have access to air,
Speaker 1: and so so Carl Zimmer's article also discusses the work
Speaker 1: of Danish microbiologist Lars Peter Nielsen, And this is different
Speaker 1: spelling of Nils, different Nielsen. This is a two Nielsen night.
Speaker 1: But it's once an in e A L and one's
Speaker 1: an in I E L. Personally, no offense to the
Speaker 1: other guy, but I'm more of an inn I E
Speaker 1: L kind of guy. Yeah, it stands out a little
Speaker 1: bit more so. This guy, Lars Peter Nielsen, discovered an
Speaker 1: electrical bacterial ecosystem within the mud from the Bay of
Speaker 1: our Hoots. I hope I'm saying that right. It's a
Speaker 1: coastal area on the western side of the main peninsula
Speaker 1: of denmarks are roos A A R H U s.
Speaker 1: So basically within a core of mud sample here, you'd
Speaker 1: have bacteria lower down down in the mud with anaerobic metabolism. Again,
Speaker 1: that means oxygen free. They don't need oxygen to live,
Speaker 1: and they would produce hydrogen sulfide. Is a waste product
Speaker 1: of their way of life. And hydrogen sulfide we've talked about,
Speaker 1: I'm sure plenty of times on the show before. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a poisonous gas that smells like rotten eggs.
Speaker 1: It's just like it's bad stuff. It smells like death.
Speaker 1: You'd commonly find it in places where biological material is
Speaker 1: being decomposed in the absence of oxygen, so again anaerobic decomposition.
Speaker 1: Like you will smell this stuff wafting up out of
Speaker 1: swamps and out of sewers and stuff like that. It
Speaker 1: was one of the bye products that people had to
Speaker 1: protect their faces from when they went down to fight
Speaker 1: the soap dragon. Yeah. The fact, I don't know why
Speaker 1: I said protect their faces. I mean like wear gas masks, right,
Speaker 1: I don't mean like it's going to hurt their faces
Speaker 1: out at them and try to attach. It's like the
Speaker 1: face hugger. Uh no, no, like it's like you don't
Speaker 1: want to breathe it um now. Of course, in order
Speaker 1: for you to smell hydrogen sulfide, in order to smell
Speaker 1: this nasty bacterial byproduct in a mar sura sewer, the
Speaker 1: gas has to bubble up to the surface and waft
Speaker 1: out right. But Nielsen noticed that it wasn't doing that
Speaker 1: in this mud. Something was consuming this poisonous waste product
Speaker 1: before it buoyed up to the surface of the mud
Speaker 1: and escaped. But as Carl Zimmer writes in this article,
Speaker 1: if other bacteria below we're breaking down this hydrogen sulfide
Speaker 1: without oxygen to aid in the metabolic process, again, you
Speaker 1: would have an unacceptable build up of electrons, and so
Speaker 1: this excess electricity would have to go somewhere. And what
Speaker 1: they found is exactly what you might guess. The bacteria
Speaker 1: were extending biological electric wires built out of thousands of
Speaker 1: cells surrounded by a conductive protein sheath. Uh kind of
Speaker 1: like the you know, the sheath you might see on
Speaker 1: a copper wire to protect it, except it's the other
Speaker 1: way around. In this case. The sheath is what's conducting
Speaker 1: the electricity. So it's kind of like if you had
Speaker 1: like plastic surrounded by copper, I guess, which would be
Speaker 1: a bad design for a wire, but it works in
Speaker 1: this case. And these wires are known as cable bacteria.
Speaker 1: The cable bacteria allow the waste electricity to flow out
Speaker 1: to the surface, and once the electrons reach the surface,
Speaker 1: there you've got surface bacteria which have access to oxygen,
Speaker 1: unlike the bacteria below because they're on the surface of course.
Speaker 1: So these bacteria use the electricity to cause a chemical
Speaker 1: reaction between oxygen and hydrogen, the waste product of which
Speaker 1: is water. And to quote from Karl's article quote and
Speaker 1: cable bacteria grow to astonishing densities. One square inch of
Speaker 1: sediment may contain as much as eight miles of cables.
Speaker 1: Dr Nilsen eventually learned to spot cable bacteria with the
Speaker 1: naked eye. Their wires look like spider silk reflecting the sun. Beautiful,
Speaker 1: and you can look at pictures of this. Actually, I agree,
Speaker 1: they do look kind of like spider silk. They're kind of, uh,
Speaker 1: these glistening, almost invisible filaments that can kind of catch
Speaker 1: the light in certain ways. Very beautiful. But one cool
Speaker 1: thing that I guess we have to consider is they're
Speaker 1: discovering that these electroactive bacteria are found all over the place.
Speaker 1: They're abundant in ecosystems throughout the world. And given how
Speaker 1: abundant these electroactive bacteria are, it's not inconceivable that they
Speaker 1: play a major role in regulating various forms of geochemistry,
Speaker 1: like maybe regulating what kinds of minerals you would find
Speaker 1: in the top soil producing magnetite, maybe regulating the chemistry
Speaker 1: of the atmosphere, or regulating the chemistry of the oceans. Right, So,
Speaker 1: I mean other they come here is that this is
Speaker 1: not just some rare, obscure thing that you encountering only
Speaker 1: like you know, some sort of bizarre extreme environment. But
Speaker 1: they're they're they're found all over and could have a
Speaker 1: very important role. Now, primarily the examples we've been looking
Speaker 1: at so far have been bacteria that sort of pump
Speaker 1: out electricity in order to metaphorically breathe. You know, the
Speaker 1: electricity is this waste product, so the extra electrons have
Speaker 1: to be disposed of and to something that will accept them.
Speaker 1: But we already mentioned that it does go both ways.
Speaker 1: Like also mentioned in h Fox Skellies article for the
Speaker 1: BBC is the idea that um that scientists have been
Speaker 1: finding more bacteria that simply are able to consume pure electricity,
Speaker 1: that consume electrons when they need to, And she gives
Speaker 1: the example of a University of Cincinnati microbiologists named Innett
Speaker 1: Row who's found several bacterial species that live on the
Speaker 1: ocean floor and apparently they can live off of pure
Speaker 1: electrical current if they need to. It's not that they
Speaker 1: naturally make make their lives this way, but it seems
Speaker 1: like this is something that they are able to to
Speaker 1: sustain themselves without dying for a period of time. So
Speaker 1: if I understand correctly, this is different than an organism
Speaker 1: that just like thrives on pure electricity with no food.
Speaker 1: But there there is even evidence of like you know,
Speaker 1: we were talking earlier about these relationships between electroactive organisms
Speaker 1: and one bacterium having electric city is a waste product
Speaker 1: and then routing it to a bacterium that will accept
Speaker 1: it as a as an incoming energy product. And there's
Speaker 1: even evidence of like cross species or cross organism type
Speaker 1: electrical grids spanning different kingdoms of life, and this example
Speaker 1: being the electrical cooperation between bacteria and archaea in deep
Speaker 1: ocean floor habitats that are rich with methane uh to
Speaker 1: to quote from Fox Skellies article, the archaea feed on
Speaker 1: electrons from methane, oxidizing the gas to generate carbonate. They
Speaker 1: then pass the electrons onto their partner bacteria along the
Speaker 1: nano wires, which act like power cables. Finally, the bacteria
Speaker 1: deposit the electrons onto sulfate, producing energy that the cell
Speaker 1: can use in the process. And so we don't know
Speaker 1: how far back these types of relationships go, but it's
Speaker 1: easy to imagine these these types of cooperation evolving billions
Speaker 1: of years ago, especially before Earth's atmosphere underwent the gray
Speaker 1: poisoning when all the oxygen showed up. All right, we're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break. When we come back. We're
Speaker 1: going to get to an area that a lot of
Speaker 1: you are probably thinking about like, you know, if we
Speaker 1: have we're talking about the organisms that they utilize electricity,
Speaker 1: they're producing these these nano filaments. Uh, then there's got
Speaker 1: to be a way that we could harness that power
Speaker 1: ourselves put them to work. Yeah, that's exactly what we're
Speaker 1: going to discuss when we come back. Thank alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So if you're listening to this this podcast via some
Speaker 1: sort of an electronic device, I mean, we electronics are
Speaker 1: are kind of our thing right as a species, and
Speaker 1: so it stands to reason that as we discover these
Speaker 1: these these bacteria that are they're using electricity, that are
Speaker 1: that are creating these little filaments that we eat envisioned
Speaker 1: ways to again harness their power. I don't know about you.
Speaker 1: I listen to my podcast by plugging directly into bacterial
Speaker 1: ats like I've got a I've got a big stroma
Speaker 1: light in my house, and I just jack in, Well,
Speaker 1: that's not that's not as as as crazy distant from
Speaker 1: the reality. The possible realities we're going to discuss is
Speaker 1: one might think it's it's a little crazy, but but yeah,
Speaker 1: when you when you think about these actual electroactive bacteria
Speaker 1: that there do seem to be some potentials just one example, Like,
Speaker 1: there are all kinds of ideas where people have talked
Speaker 1: about using electroactive bacteria as as a potential electrical sources.
Speaker 1: But one of the many ideas I came across was
Speaker 1: to use the electrical potential of geobacter for small scale
Speaker 1: energy purposes in Peru. So I was reading a few
Speaker 1: articles from about how researchers at the University of Engineering
Speaker 1: and Technology in Peru were pioneering a method to draw
Speaker 1: usable electricity directly from the soil, specifically using the outflow
Speaker 1: of electrons from the respiration of geobacters. Now this is
Speaker 1: meaningful in in the context of what they were doing
Speaker 1: in Peru, because some villages and dwellings in the Peruvian
Speaker 1: rainforest don't have connections to the electrical grid mini don't
Speaker 1: at the time they were doing this project. The project
Speaker 1: leaders claimed that it was like fort of villages in
Speaker 1: the rainforest did not have connections, and those that do
Speaker 1: have connections are at risk to lose power entirely when
Speaker 1: lines are knocked out by floods, as happened in March.
Speaker 1: And so this means of course, after it gets dark,
Speaker 1: people can't read, kids can't study for school unless they
Speaker 1: use like kerosene lamps, which are apparently unhealthy and are
Speaker 1: hard on the eyes. I can imagine that. So this method,
Speaker 1: developed by ut Ec in partnership with a company called
Speaker 1: FCB Mayo, works to charge batteries and power LED lamps
Speaker 1: with a special bioelectric box. And the box has a
Speaker 1: plant on top with roots planted in the soil, and
Speaker 1: then electrodes plunged into this grid of little so oil
Speaker 1: buckets that are full of geobactors, and the metabolic interaction
Speaker 1: between the plant and the geobactors generates excess electric charge
Speaker 1: in the soil, and that electric charge gets routed up
Speaker 1: through the electrodes that are planted in the soil, whisks
Speaker 1: those free electrons away to charge a battery, which in
Speaker 1: turn powers the LED lamp. Now we're not sure how
Speaker 1: scalable this individual technology is, but it shows the general
Speaker 1: principle that you can draw small, at least small amounts
Speaker 1: of power or electricity directly from electric bacteria and the
Speaker 1: soil when other power sources are not readily available. And
Speaker 1: this seems possibly like an interesting alternative to say, you know,
Speaker 1: those small scale solar panels that you see being used
Speaker 1: to power individual devices or lights, you know, things like
Speaker 1: that like various garden gnomes and whatnot that light up
Speaker 1: or their garden gnomes they get power. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: You see, this is like the main place I feel
Speaker 1: like one tends to see this sort of technology, like
Speaker 1: little little lights that go in your yard that have
Speaker 1: little solar panel on them, you know. Uh. But um oh,
Speaker 1: I guess I've just never seen one mounted in a gnome,
Speaker 1: but I see it now. It can have red light
Speaker 1: up eyes. Yeah. I mean I assume there's a no
Speaker 1: there has someone has had to have created one. Wanted
Speaker 1: to know. But you know, it's one thing to to
Speaker 1: to power an LED lamp. But I think this does,
Speaker 1: you know, drive home that even if you're only talking
Speaker 1: about producing such small amounts of electricity to power you know,
Speaker 1: you know, very low energy lighting effects, that still can
Speaker 1: make a huge difference in the right circumstances. Yeah, it can.
Speaker 1: And you can imagine using elements of this bacterial electro
Speaker 1: biology in concert with other technologies, uh, to build up
Speaker 1: more capabilities. Like in his Times article, Carl Zimmer mentions
Speaker 1: that a Cornell University researcher named Buzz Barstow and colleagues
Speaker 1: are trying to figure out if bacteria could be of
Speaker 1: use when paired with solar panels, so not in place
Speaker 1: of them, but working in concert with them, and the
Speaker 1: idea is that the solar panels would convert the sunlight
Speaker 1: into electric current, which would then be routed into bacterial
Speaker 1: wires down down to these colonies of bacterium called shoe
Speaker 1: and Ella. That's the one I mentioned earlier that was
Speaker 1: discovered in Lake Oneida, shoe and Ella, and that could
Speaker 1: use the energy from the electrons to metabolize organic compounds
Speaker 1: and turn it into fuel. Yeah, this would really be
Speaker 1: key for for carbon fixation. So so the studying question
Speaker 1: here is two thousand nineteen study title Electrical Energy Storage
Speaker 1: with Engineered Biological Systems published in the Journal of Biological Engineering,
Speaker 1: and we're essentially talking It kind of comes back to
Speaker 1: the Virus movie we're talking about because we're essentially talking
Speaker 1: about a cybernetic energy storage system a synthesis of biological
Speaker 1: and non biological electrochemical engineering. The authors point out that
Speaker 1: non biological methods for using electricity for carbon fixation they
Speaker 1: started to match and even exceed the capability of microbes
Speaker 1: but that biological methods are better at pumping out the
Speaker 1: complex sort of complex molecules that are ultimately necessary for
Speaker 1: biofuels and polymers. So it's it's kind of a way
Speaker 1: to improve you know, the photosynthesis in this situation, Like
Speaker 1: you think of it as like photosynthesis plus or photosynthesis
Speaker 1: two point oh. Nice. So it's like making an artificial tree,
Speaker 1: except it's a solar panel and a bunch of bacteria. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, it's like it's it's part bacteria, part solar
Speaker 1: system technology and uh and and the results, yeah, can
Speaker 1: could could help with carbon fixation. Yeah. Another thing Carl
Speaker 1: mentions is that the electrical bacterial filaments could be used
Speaker 1: as some form of sensors, like a little little tiny
Speaker 1: electro sensitive or conductive wires can be useful to you know,
Speaker 1: essentially for signaling purposes. And he gives the example of, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, being attached to some kind of wearable technology
Speaker 1: that would touch the skin, and these little bacterial nano
Speaker 1: wires could detect chemical changes in the properties of our
Speaker 1: sweat and that might be biologically useful information that can
Speaker 1: be transmitted to a device that might tell you, I
Speaker 1: don't know what you know there's something wrong with your sweat, dude,
Speaker 1: you need to Yeah. Yeah, just basically this gets into
Speaker 1: the whole area of like, to whatever extent we can
Speaker 1: develop dependable like real time biomonitoring medical medical monitoring technology
Speaker 1: like this kind of a you know, a huge positive
Speaker 1: impact on human health. But yeah, so Carl Carl mentioned
Speaker 1: specifically the work of Derek Lovely again. Uh So he
Speaker 1: you know, again the guy who discovered geobacter and uh
Speaker 1: and has since expanded in into discovering several other microbe species,
Speaker 1: just as other researchers have also discovered other microbe species
Speaker 1: that have these same capabilities. And he's pointed out that
Speaker 1: while geobacters filaments are super thin, like three nanometers in diameter,
Speaker 1: some are more really some of the more really recently
Speaker 1: discovered bacteria have fatter filaments and uh and this is
Speaker 1: especially useful for us if we're looking to manipulate them.
Speaker 1: If you want to manipulate them into some sort of
Speaker 1: an electronic device, like an nano wire sensors that we're
Speaker 1: talking about, it pays to have something a little on
Speaker 1: a you know, a slightly larger scale so that we
Speaker 1: can we can actually work with it. Lovely and Uh
Speaker 1: and his co authors. They also point out that protein
Speaker 1: nano wire like this would have a number of advantage
Speaker 1: over silicon nano wires. So if we're talking about the biocompatibility,
Speaker 1: the state of the stability, the potential for modification into
Speaker 1: various biomolecules and quote chemicals of medical or environmental interest,
Speaker 1: and plus the sustainable method of producing these nano wires
Speaker 1: will make it easier to build the sort of devices
Speaker 1: we're trying to make and hoping to make in the future.
Speaker 1: He points out that we've been making the thimble sized
Speaker 1: amounts of the sort of you know, wire materials that
Speaker 1: we need for for the future we're trying to build.
Speaker 1: But what we need we need buckets of them. We
Speaker 1: need buckets of these nano wires. And this is a
Speaker 1: possible means by which we can grow buckets of nano wires. Oh,
Speaker 1: it almost sounds like the early penicilla problem, you know,
Speaker 1: with the Oxford researchers in the lab and they were
Speaker 1: working with Alexander Fleming strain of penicillin. We talked about
Speaker 1: this in a recent episode of Invention. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: they could they could create this penicillin from the Penicillium fungus,
Speaker 1: the mold, but they couldn't make enough of it that
Speaker 1: it would be useful. Like the first time they tried
Speaker 1: to treat somebody with it who had a deadly infection.
Speaker 1: The guy was successfully treated for a few days, but
Speaker 1: the guy with the infection eventually died because they ran
Speaker 1: out of penicillin. They just couldn't make enough of it.
Speaker 1: And they later uh, it only broke through his medicine
Speaker 1: because they discovered a more productive strain that could make
Speaker 1: more of the stuff. Yeah, And I want to come
Speaker 1: back to the the the the the sustainability aspect of
Speaker 1: this too. The idea here being that if you know,
Speaker 1: you could have these these devices and when they're done,
Speaker 1: you're not just like it's not going into a dump,
Speaker 1: it's not potentially being you know, part of some sort
Speaker 1: of toxic waste. It is just you know, biodegrading into
Speaker 1: the environment. Oh yeah, I mean electronic waste is actually
Speaker 1: a big deal. Like we you know, we we don't
Speaker 1: see a lot of it. But what happens to all
Speaker 1: these electronic components when we're done with them and the
Speaker 1: thing breaks and you just throw it away. Possibility to
Speaker 1: be able to grow these things. I mean obviously that's
Speaker 1: that that would have tremendous advantage. Yeah, absolutely, and and
Speaker 1: that they'd be biodegradable just you know, some other bacterium
Speaker 1: just eats them up when you're done. But another thing
Speaker 1: that I've read about these electroactive bacteria is that some
Speaker 1: of them are extremely good candidates for the bioremediation of waste,
Speaker 1: including toxic and radioactive waste, where they can take something like,
Speaker 1: you know, a type of radioactive waste, say, like you know,
Speaker 1: a type of uranium, and they can, through their their
Speaker 1: metabolic process, reduce that uranium to say, a less soluble form,
Speaker 1: So they're not going to completely destroy it, but they
Speaker 1: might change it into a form that makes it less
Speaker 1: damaging to the environment. And the same could be true
Speaker 1: for other forms of pollution. Another another thing I've seen
Speaker 1: it referenced as the the idea of using bacteria like
Speaker 1: this to clean up oil spills. You know that you
Speaker 1: can like eat eat hydrocarbons that are in places they
Speaker 1: shouldn't be, right, Plastic waste being another another big one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's interesting We've been championing fung gui on the
Speaker 1: show for a little bit here and now it's it's
Speaker 1: bacteria's time to shine. We're back in the land of Jubilex. Yeah,
Speaker 1: jubile X being the d n d H demon lord
Speaker 1: of slimes and oozes, which in bast episode we kind
Speaker 1: of associated loosely with bacteria, and it is the arch
Speaker 1: enemy of Zogdomoi, the demon lord of funga. I raised
Speaker 1: the flag of Jubilex for today. Yes, that's my side,
Speaker 1: all right. So there we have it. Um, there's you
Speaker 1: know they're there are various areas here where we could
Speaker 1: branch off, so you know, if you're interested in hearing
Speaker 1: more episodes about about bacteria or about various means of
Speaker 1: dealing with radioactive waste, but we would love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. In the meantime, check out stuff to All
Speaker 1: your mind dot com. That's where you find all the episodes.
Speaker 1: And if you want to support the show, you need
Speaker 1: to tell some friends about it, tell family members about it,
Speaker 1: tell household pets about our show, and then make sure
Speaker 1: you rate and review us wherever you have the power
Speaker 1: to do so. Huge thanks as always to our excellent
Speaker 1: audio producer, Maya Cole. If you'd like to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us with feedback, on this episode or any other.
Speaker 1: To suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 1: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
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