Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking Either and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast
Speaker 1: that looks at the future and says, put me in
Speaker 1: a wheelchair and get me to the show. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, and uh, and Lauren, we've given
Speaker 1: the day off. Lauren was feeling a bit under the weather.
Speaker 1: Perhaps uh, perhaps bacteria had something to do with it,
Speaker 1: or maybe she just felt like it was too soon.
Speaker 1: But today we wanted to talk about bacteria, microbes and
Speaker 1: and ways that we have found two to get these
Speaker 1: these tiny, these microscopic organisms to do stuff that either
Speaker 1: they wouldn't normally do, or they would do it, but
Speaker 1: they would do it at a very slow rate, and
Speaker 1: to ramp it up so that we can actually make
Speaker 1: use out of the microscopic world. Yeah, it's interesting the
Speaker 1: idea of trying to get microbes working for us instead
Speaker 1: of against us, since you know, we've all experienced plenty
Speaker 1: of setbacks in our lives due to what bacteria have
Speaker 1: to offer and arsenal, some some food poisoning in there
Speaker 1: or something. In fact, one of the major culprits of
Speaker 1: food poisoning E. Coli is going to pop up a
Speaker 1: lot in this podcast. It's hard to stop ecoali from
Speaker 1: popping up. That room temperature hot dog is yeah, just boy,
Speaker 1: that that that potato salad that's been left out for
Speaker 1: a while. That's that's still good. The future of engineering
Speaker 1: is what it is. In fact, there's some applications will
Speaker 1: be talking about where the reason why we're looking to
Speaker 1: bacteria in the first place is because we don't know
Speaker 1: of any way to scent the size the materials that
Speaker 1: the bacteria produced naturally, or if we do, it's like
Speaker 1: really inefficient, really inefficient, really expensive, very you know, time
Speaker 1: and energy consuming. So it just makes way more sense
Speaker 1: to go with the bacteria. But there was at least
Speaker 1: one of the the articles that we read where specifically
Speaker 1: they said, we cannot synthesize this in the lab, and
Speaker 1: I think, well, well, we probably should say we can't
Speaker 1: synthesize it today. Maybe sometimes down the road we can,
Speaker 1: but it makes way more sense to pour the money
Speaker 1: into research and development with bacterial organisms that do produce
Speaker 1: this stuff and find ways of making them do that
Speaker 1: at a much larger scale than what they currently do.
Speaker 1: And then we just we reap the benefit that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in fact, that's one of the biggest challenges really
Speaker 1: is figuring out how to how to optimize these processes
Speaker 1: so that you get a usable amount of stuff, something
Speaker 1: that you can use in manufacturing, for instance, or producing drugs.
Speaker 1: We've been doing that. I mean, we we use bacteria
Speaker 1: to produce insulin, so I mean it's it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where you know, insulin for people who have
Speaker 1: to do insulin injections, a lot of insulins generated through bacteria.
Speaker 1: So through bacteria that's been genetically tampered with, like what
Speaker 1: we reach in there and we we lift out part
Speaker 1: of a plasm it and replace it with a piece
Speaker 1: of human DNA that creates insulin exactly. Yeah, essentially you
Speaker 1: gotta remember d N A. That's that's that's like instructions.
Speaker 1: It's almost like a program. You can think of it
Speaker 1: if you're thinking in terms of computers. You can think
Speaker 1: of it as an algorithm or set of instructions that
Speaker 1: tell uh A in this case, a a cellular bacterium cell,
Speaker 1: a cell. There are words that are coming from me
Speaker 1: a cell. This is where Lauren would jump in if
Speaker 1: she were here. But you know, she's battling her own bacteria. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's where a cell would end up following these directions
Speaker 1: to you know, saying when this happens, do this. That's essentially,
Speaker 1: you know, like an if then kind of function, and uh,
Speaker 1: if we switch those instructions out, then that's what the
Speaker 1: cell will do. That's drastically oversimplifying what's going on. But
Speaker 1: if you if you take a really high view of
Speaker 1: what we are trying to do, that's essentially the step
Speaker 1: you try and find the little elements of d n
Speaker 1: A that you can use to swap in and out
Speaker 1: for these various kinds of bacteria and get the results
Speaker 1: you need. And ecoli turns out to be one of
Speaker 1: the ones we use the most frequently. And you might wonder,
Speaker 1: you know, well, you know, I've heard about ecoli every time.
Speaker 1: Everything I've heard about it is essentially that it's bad,
Speaker 1: you don't want it, and you're uncooked hamburger. It's why
Speaker 1: you need to ruin your hamburger before you eat it, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you don't want to you know, by ruin it,
Speaker 1: I think Joe means that, yeah, cooking it until it's
Speaker 1: well done, yeah, as opposed to to medium rare um. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are. There are restaurants in in Atlanta now where
Speaker 1: they won't do it medium rare. At least they won't.
Speaker 1: They say on the menu they won't do it in
Speaker 1: the well A lot do and they just have a
Speaker 1: little disclaimer there. It's like, you know, but you might die,
Speaker 1: but it'll taste good and you'll be happy when you die.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna talk a lot about E Coli. That
Speaker 1: means that we I thought a quick history lesson on
Speaker 1: Eco I was an order and so in the late
Speaker 1: nineteenth century there was a German pediatrician who was looking
Speaker 1: into why babies were dying. Uh, they were, they were
Speaker 1: had they had a symptom of diarrhea, and they were
Speaker 1: just they were dying, and he wanted to find out
Speaker 1: what it was that was causing the diarrhea. Are you
Speaker 1: talking abouts No? Oh, okay, I'm talking about Theodore. Oh
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I thought we were going down then. simWISE,
Speaker 1: totally distract Theodore Escorridge. And if you wonder why it's
Speaker 1: called E Coli Escaridge, that's his last name. It's it's
Speaker 1: actually Escarrichia. Coli is the full name of E. Coli
Speaker 1: and so it comes from this guy, Thomas es An Honor. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He well, he was he was trying to figure out how,
Speaker 1: you know, what, what was the mechanism that was causing
Speaker 1: these babies to become sick and how could he fight that?
Speaker 1: And so he was looking into it and he found
Speaker 1: what he thought was the causative agent, and he thought
Speaker 1: it was an organism that was causing this because he
Speaker 1: was he was following the germ theory of illness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a a theory. Not everyone at that time
Speaker 1: subscribe to it. So certainly not the people who jailed
Speaker 1: Dignate simil wise right, right, right exactly. I mean that's
Speaker 1: the thing is that you know, there were there were
Speaker 1: there were those who were pursuing this line of thought,
Speaker 1: and there were those who were denying it. He was
Speaker 1: pursuing it, and uh, he ended up discovering what he
Speaker 1: called Bacillus communists coli, which now we all call e coli.
Speaker 1: And uh, it was actually named that after his death,
Speaker 1: and we call it a model organism. And the reason
Speaker 1: we call it that is because there's been so much
Speaker 1: study of ecoli that we know everything about it. We
Speaker 1: know the full genome of ecoli and also, uh, it's
Speaker 1: a great example of something that you can work with
Speaker 1: in a laboratory because laboratory conditions. You know, it can
Speaker 1: grow in a very wide range of conditions. But it
Speaker 1: does really really well in um in just room temperature,
Speaker 1: so you can grow it very quickly. It has a
Speaker 1: very rapid growth rate, so it has very simple nutritional requirements.
Speaker 1: We know all the genetics about it, so and you
Speaker 1: mean literally all the genetics. So it's kind of at
Speaker 1: this point like open source BioWare right, exactly. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can look at this as saying this is this is
Speaker 1: the slate we can build on. It's not quite a
Speaker 1: blank slate because we actually do have to remove stuff
Speaker 1: and then replace it with other stuff in order to
Speaker 1: make the ecolie do what we wanted to do. But
Speaker 1: it means that because we have such a deep understanding
Speaker 1: of this particular organism, it's perfect for some genetic modifications
Speaker 1: so that we can make it do other things. The
Speaker 1: lenox of germs, it kind of is. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: a little penguin shaped bacteria. It's not quite penguin shape
Speaker 1: exactly shaped like a room temperature hot dog. Yep. Good times.
Speaker 1: So so anyway, they're using eco life for lots of
Speaker 1: different things, including producing various kinds of chemicals for both
Speaker 1: drugs and for manufacturing projects. Yeah, so we mentioned that
Speaker 1: it may it can make ethanol, which is the alcohol
Speaker 1: that makes your wine awesome or your beer awesome. Or
Speaker 1: it can make it can help make sorry with insulin,
Speaker 1: right for drugs. What what else can it do? What
Speaker 1: else can it make? Well, let's see it can make well,
Speaker 1: it can make isoprene is supreme. Yeah, that's uh, that's
Speaker 1: like jet airliner fuel, isn't it. It's also like the
Speaker 1: stuff that can go into rubber. Yeah, so your tires
Speaker 1: and your tires. Yeah, so I mean you can get
Speaker 1: isoprene in different ways, right, you can. You can do
Speaker 1: it essentially the way we get isoprene get lots of stuff.
Speaker 1: You can get it from fossil fuels especially. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: go to oil. You you sit there and say, well,
Speaker 1: this has got another byproduct we can get out of
Speaker 1: oil petroleum based stuff. But you know that's not necessarily
Speaker 1: environmentally friendly. And it's true that you can also genetically
Speaker 1: engineer e coolie to produce this stuff. In fact, it
Speaker 1: produce a little bit on its own. So really, what
Speaker 1: we're genetically engineering it to do is produce it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly much larger amounts for it to be efficient because, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you could start to harvest it from ecoli,
Speaker 1: but if it's just tiny little amounts, it would take
Speaker 1: forever for you to have enough for it to be useful.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be a good use of your time and resources.
Speaker 1: But by genetically modifying the ecoli, you can dramatically increase
Speaker 1: the output and thus make it something that's a viable option.
Speaker 1: So it's making this carbon compound is supreme. What it
Speaker 1: is a carbon compound, right, hydrocarbon, hydrocarbon, All those like
Speaker 1: the plastics and all the things we make from oil
Speaker 1: tend to be that. Right, So what's the investment in this?
Speaker 1: Do you do? You just need to feed the bacteria. Basically,
Speaker 1: you just give them some sugar based on corn or
Speaker 1: sugarcane or something like. It essentially is that you you
Speaker 1: feed them certain chemicals and then they will produce the
Speaker 1: isoprene and uh, just in their regular process of of
Speaker 1: of life. You know, it's just all it's all life
Speaker 1: process for them. So it does mean altering the cells
Speaker 1: a little bit so that they will do this on
Speaker 1: a scale that makes it useful. But yeah, they're essentially
Speaker 1: eating and pooping is what they're doing, right, And it's
Speaker 1: micro organism level, so it's not really eating and pooping.
Speaker 1: That's again kind of just putting it analogous to a
Speaker 1: macro organism. But but for the purposes of this conversation,
Speaker 1: sure they they eat stuff that is not as useful
Speaker 1: to us and crap out stuff that's really useful to us.
Speaker 1: So that could give us a very environmentally friendly way
Speaker 1: of producing isoprene on a on a level that's important
Speaker 1: enough for the manufacturing processes right now, you know, they're
Speaker 1: they're mostly in the research and development phase of that
Speaker 1: kind of work. But we've also seen bacteria producing other stuff.
Speaker 1: You you pointed me to a great, uh study about
Speaker 1: bacteria that produces gold. Yeah. I saw this and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, you know, finally the medieval alchemist's dream
Speaker 1: is realized from the organism level. From beyond the grave.
Speaker 1: They're groaning with envy like shots if only we had
Speaker 1: found that, right. Well, apparently what they found is that
Speaker 1: there um is a bacteria that can turn something called
Speaker 1: gold chloride, which is this toxic chemical. Anything that has
Speaker 1: the word chloride in it tends to be pretty nasty
Speaker 1: for people. Hey, what about sodium chloride? It tends to
Speaker 1: be if you break that, If you break that molecular
Speaker 1: bond and you now have pure sodium and pure chloride,
Speaker 1: that's two things that are really bad for people. But
Speaker 1: I mean, you you put some sodium chloride on your lunch.
Speaker 1: Didn't you know someone else did? Well? I didn't add
Speaker 1: any I get enough sodium in my diet, right right? Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: but so it takes it takes old gold chloride, which
Speaker 1: is this some kind of nasty chemical. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: never handled it, but that talk chemical diary that it's
Speaker 1: it's it's something you don't want to mess with. Um
Speaker 1: turns it into twenty four carrot gold just pure gold. Yep,
Speaker 1: well pure, there's a point one percent impurity. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a that old soap commercial nine.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's a it's a it's interesting because you think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: does this mean you could produce lots and lots of gold? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is this going to upset the whole gold market? Well, no,
Speaker 1: it's not. Even though this is pretty amazing that they
Speaker 1: can do this. The reason it's not going to devalue
Speaker 1: gold and turn the world economy on its head, though,
Speaker 1: I mean that wouldn't have the effect it once had now,
Speaker 1: I guess um. But the reason that's not gonna happen
Speaker 1: is the same problem we discussed with ice, aprene and
Speaker 1: and other stuff. Right. It just it can't make enough
Speaker 1: fast enough yet that it really matters that that and
Speaker 1: and and gold chloride's not exactly you know, falling out
Speaker 1: the sky. If we're we'd all be dead. But it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's not it's not plentiful, and it does like
Speaker 1: like in the article you linked me to, they actually
Speaker 1: talk about how while while one scientists say it takes
Speaker 1: it takes something that's useless and or or or worthless
Speaker 1: and then turns it into gold. The article, the guy
Speaker 1: who wrote it pointed out that in fact, gold chloride
Speaker 1: costs quite a bit of money to purchase because it's
Speaker 1: not gold, not more than gold. It's it's still you
Speaker 1: would still have a winning proposition by the end of it.
Speaker 1: But it's, uh, it's not like it's cheap. It's not
Speaker 1: like it's this weird, you know, we we don't have
Speaker 1: these gigantic pools of gold chloride sitting just under the
Speaker 1: surface of the ground. Somebody was like, hey, I found
Speaker 1: a way to turn Action Comics number one into solid gold. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's more like, hey, I found a way of turning kryptonite,
Speaker 1: like this fictional element into gold. Oh all right, well excellent,
Speaker 1: um so any but it's still you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of a neat thing and that it's another one of
Speaker 1: those processes that could one day become useful. Should we
Speaker 1: have an easier way of getting gold chloride? Well, I
Speaker 1: think it just illustrates that it's not just this chemical
Speaker 1: like gold. Sorry, Bacteria can create all kinds of chemicals. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, we've talked about, um, you know, different kinds
Speaker 1: of medications. There are a lot of other drugs that
Speaker 1: are uh possibilities that that that bacteria could create. So
Speaker 1: it's it's one of those things where where we could
Speaker 1: create these little micro factories, and in fact, we could
Speaker 1: even create micro factories that could work uh in vitro,
Speaker 1: Like we could have micro organisms that you would inject
Speaker 1: into a person to treat diseases like cancer. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what we're reading about the these like these drug delivery bacteria,
Speaker 1: right right, So again the bacteria would have their normal
Speaker 1: natural processes altered by switching out some strands of DNA,
Speaker 1: and what they would end up doing is they would
Speaker 1: consume regular stuff, but they would end up producing cancer
Speaker 1: killing chemicals. And you would coat the the bacteria with
Speaker 1: a protein that would essentially turn it into a cancer
Speaker 1: seeking bomb, so it would seek out cancer cells by
Speaker 1: the proteins would essentially lock the proteins that are on
Speaker 1: the surface of the bacteria and the proteins that are
Speaker 1: a part of the cancer cell would lock together, so
Speaker 1: it would attach itself to a cancer cell, produce the
Speaker 1: cancer killing chemical, and deliver essentially chemotherapy to the cancer
Speaker 1: cell directly. And the reason damaging all the surrounding tissue, right,
Speaker 1: because that's the big problem with chemotherapy, right, is that chemotherapy,
Speaker 1: when you introduce chemotherapy to a cancer patients not smart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not smart. It attacks everything, right, It's not just
Speaker 1: attacking cancer cells, it's attacking healthy cells as well, which
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons why chemotherapy has so many
Speaker 1: nasty side effects, why people have to deal with uh
Speaker 1: feeling nauseated and and having other other really really terrible symptoms.
Speaker 1: While they're trying to fight cancer. Well, if you were
Speaker 1: able to create a delivery system that would deliver the
Speaker 1: chemicals only to the cancer cells, you would drastically reduce
Speaker 1: those side effects. You wouldn't necessarily eliminate all of them,
Speaker 1: but you you could reduce them so that like the
Speaker 1: quality of life increases dramatically for the person who's undergoing
Speaker 1: that treatment. Of course, from what I read this, uh,
Speaker 1: this research is really promising, but it's also not without danger,
Speaker 1: right because these these little many attackers, you know, the
Speaker 1: tiny gun ships, if they get loose, they do actually
Speaker 1: possibly represent a threat to people. Anytime we're talking about
Speaker 1: introducing something that's going to have an ongoing active role
Speaker 1: within a person's body, then clearly you have to be
Speaker 1: really careful about how it's going to interact. Whether that
Speaker 1: means it would produce toxins that would hurt the person directly,
Speaker 1: or maybe it would have an unintended consequence. For instance,
Speaker 1: it might kill off a cancer cell, but perhaps something
Speaker 1: else that gives off ends up causing other problems, like
Speaker 1: it could even perhaps cause cancer. I mean, it's you know,
Speaker 1: there are all these things that have to be taken
Speaker 1: into consideration. You have to do lots and lots and
Speaker 1: lots of testing before you can ever get to a
Speaker 1: point where you even have a you know, a patient
Speaker 1: try this out, um, same thing is true, and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll we'll tackle this issue in a future episode
Speaker 1: of forward thinking. But there are viral therapies out there
Speaker 1: too that use they do pretty much the same thing
Speaker 1: right with the tumors, Like they can be targeted to attack, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can, you can get. What you essentially do is
Speaker 1: you take a virus, you crack it open, you remove
Speaker 1: the virus from its shell. You put into the shell
Speaker 1: some chemotherapy drug and and a virus. Just to be clear,
Speaker 1: like it's not as complex as something like bacteria. It's
Speaker 1: basically like a shell with some DNA and right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in fact, virus is so is so not complex that
Speaker 1: we don't really have a classification for it, Like it's
Speaker 1: not easy for us to classify it as life. It's
Speaker 1: debt not on its own exactly, it's kind of it's
Speaker 1: kind of in this interesting category all on its own.
Speaker 1: But you could do the same similar thing where your
Speaker 1: same similar thing. You can do the same thing where
Speaker 1: you coat the virus with the protein, so it seeks
Speaker 1: out the cancer cell and then injects the chemotherapy drug
Speaker 1: directly into the cell. Now, in this case, the virus
Speaker 1: is not producing the chemotherapy drug. It's just a delivery system.
Speaker 1: So it's like, um, it's like a very smart injection,
Speaker 1: whereas the other one we're talking about would actually be
Speaker 1: producing the drug inside of you as part of its
Speaker 1: natural process. That we were careful to make a distinction
Speaker 1: between bacteria viruses, So maybe we should save viruses first, right, exactly,
Speaker 1: like I said, maybe we'll tackle that. Yeah, we may
Speaker 1: tackle that in a future episode, just saying that the
Speaker 1: the approach for cancer treatment is similar but not identical. Right.
Speaker 1: Uh So, So we've talked about, um, how bacteria can
Speaker 1: be used to manufacture materials and and can be used
Speaker 1: in medicine. But a little bit of what I've read
Speaker 1: has something even more interesting that it can be used
Speaker 1: for for efficient purposes in electronics. Yeah. I was reading
Speaker 1: some of the articles you you sent to me, and
Speaker 1: they are very interesting. I'm a little curious about a
Speaker 1: couple of them. One of them was about how bacterial
Speaker 1: nano wires could end up being a revolutionary electronic development,
Speaker 1: and and that got me a little curious because as
Speaker 1: soon as I heard nano wires, I thought, wait a minute, now, bacteria,
Speaker 1: you know, you're talking about a single celled organism that's
Speaker 1: not the nano scale. That's huge compared to the nano scale.
Speaker 1: But they were specially specifically referring to proteins fibers grow
Speaker 1: off of the bacteria protein filaments, which are much smaller
Speaker 1: than the bacteria. So once I got into that and
Speaker 1: I saw that what they were talking about, I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: I see what they're saying. The filaments themselves are on
Speaker 1: the nano scale as opposed to the bacteria, and that
Speaker 1: they so nano wires. If you're thinking about the actual
Speaker 1: mechanism where electrons are getting carried across, it would be
Speaker 1: across these little filaments, then I have no problem with
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that the wires themselves would be on
Speaker 1: the nano scale, because I would imagine the rest of
Speaker 1: the bacteria would be there too. But um, but maybe
Speaker 1: it's just that I'm having a hard time visualizing exactly
Speaker 1: what they're talking about. But yeah, you could grow nano
Speaker 1: wires this way, and uh, again, this could make it
Speaker 1: very useful for all sorts of applications, including things that
Speaker 1: would need to operate within an organism because electronics it's
Speaker 1: kind of hard to get the traditional electronics to operate
Speaker 1: inside an environment, like the same thing with underwater sensors.
Speaker 1: Anything that would normally cause a problem because of shorting. Uh,
Speaker 1: the way the way the bacteria are able to bond
Speaker 1: together with these these protein filaments could get around that.
Speaker 1: So that's something that's a promising potential application. Keeping in
Speaker 1: mind that this is in the earliest stages of research
Speaker 1: and development, right we are we we can already use
Speaker 1: bacteria in some types of electronics, right that. There are
Speaker 1: bacteria that can be used to since the presence of humidity.
Speaker 1: This is this is kind of interesting. Yeah, that so
Speaker 1: that you're talking about that there's this bacteria that you
Speaker 1: coat with nanoparticles of gold, which unfortunately this eventually kills
Speaker 1: the bacteria, but it doesn't matter. It will still still work,
Speaker 1: or at least it works. It works according to the
Speaker 1: scientists who researched this, it works up to a month
Speaker 1: after they have died. They called it zombie bacteria. But
Speaker 1: you use gold mina. This is zombie cyborg backed area. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you need movie, what is first you start
Speaker 1: with the gold chlora and you give that to the
Speaker 1: gold making bacteria. And then what do you do with
Speaker 1: the gold, Well, you actually have to get it into
Speaker 1: the you know, make it nanoparticles you have to get
Speaker 1: into and yeah, on the nano scale, elements can have
Speaker 1: very different properties than they would on the macro scale.
Speaker 1: So for example, silver, silver already has some antibacterial properties
Speaker 1: to it, but on the on the nano scale, those
Speaker 1: are very greatly uh emphasized. So you actually can find
Speaker 1: bandages that have silver nano particles in them because it
Speaker 1: will help fight off or keep keeping a wound infection free.
Speaker 1: Oh I didn't know that. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. But
Speaker 1: you know, the same is true across many elements that
Speaker 1: when you get it down to the nano scale, they
Speaker 1: start to exhibit different features. Well, okay, so we're talking
Speaker 1: about nanoparticles of gold. Nanoparticles of gold, and they essentially
Speaker 1: coat the bacteria so that it creates a way for
Speaker 1: an electronic charge to move. Our electrical charge rather to
Speaker 1: move across the bacteria. So you think of the bacteria
Speaker 1: as just kind of a little blip in a in
Speaker 1: a circuit. Now, if that bacteria encounters water, it starts
Speaker 1: to swell. Now, the gold nanoparticles are actually on these
Speaker 1: little those little filaments on the outside of the bacteria, right,
Speaker 1: so the bacteria is beard. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a
Speaker 1: you know, think of a like a hedgehog with these
Speaker 1: little bitty gold nuggets on the end of all the
Speaker 1: little bristles. Well, if that hedgehog starts to expand, the
Speaker 1: bristles start to move further apart from each other, and
Speaker 1: it creates gaps between those gold nanoparticles. So if it
Speaker 1: creates enough gaps, then that electric charge can't move across
Speaker 1: the particle the way it did before. And because you're
Speaker 1: talking about a very very tiny organism, you can get
Speaker 1: some pretty incredible sensitivity on here, so you can detect
Speaker 1: very minute changes in humidity, which could be really useful
Speaker 1: for certain things like imagine a library that has rare
Speaker 1: works in it that need to be protected at a
Speaker 1: certain level of you know, dry air, and anything below
Speaker 1: that level, anything where the humidity rises too much would
Speaker 1: be a danger. Then a sensor in that environment would
Speaker 1: be very useful. Also, same things true for things like
Speaker 1: clean rooms where you're putting together microprocessors. Obviously, obviously cigar stores.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how I left those out. Okay, so,
Speaker 1: uh so we've got bacteria manufacturing chemicals and materials, manufacturing drugs,
Speaker 1: and we've got them working in electronics and electric circuits
Speaker 1: in the propagation of electrons. Can they do mechanical work
Speaker 1: in any way that's useful? Uh? Well, I wouldn't bring
Speaker 1: your beat up old Chevy to any bacteria. Just hand
Speaker 1: the ecoal I wrench. Yeah, that's stick the wrench in
Speaker 1: the uncooked hamburger. But but oddly enough to work oddly enough, Yes,
Speaker 1: they can do some mechanical work. Whether or not this
Speaker 1: will ever reach a point where it's useful, uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it will. When you talk about miniaturization, if
Speaker 1: you get things down small enough, you need to have
Speaker 1: some way of powering them, right. Oh yeah, if you
Speaker 1: if you have a little micro fluid I machine, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're going to have gears that need to operate on
Speaker 1: the micro scale. Yeah, if it's working on a mechanical basis. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if it's working on chemical or something that's different. But
Speaker 1: if it's a mechanical device then yes, so um yeah.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing is that the argon National laboratory did
Speaker 1: an experiment where they made these teeny teeny teeny tiny
Speaker 1: gears like like I think the three point eight microns across.
Speaker 1: By the way, you should go look this up and
Speaker 1: watch this because the video is really cool. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's a video. It's on YouTube and uh and
Speaker 1: also you can find it in lots of different articles.
Speaker 1: Will link to some in our blog. But uh, yeah.
Speaker 1: The the interesting thing here is that they found that
Speaker 1: by uh putting different levels of oxygen into this mixture,
Speaker 1: they could induce the bacteria to push across the the
Speaker 1: gears arms and propel them around in a circle. So
Speaker 1: if you they could essentially they could create a stream
Speaker 1: of bacteria teeming in a certain direction I think, and
Speaker 1: that by doing that, if if they oriented gears properly,
Speaker 1: they could turn the gears. Essentially, the bacteria would hit
Speaker 1: the end like the point of a gear and then
Speaker 1: stick with it and actually start to slide inward towards
Speaker 1: the center of the gear while still moving forward, so
Speaker 1: it actually would turn the gear. But what I want
Speaker 1: to emphasize is how crazy the scale differences here, because
Speaker 1: we're talking about um bacteria, which are tiny, tiny, tiny
Speaker 1: um moving something that is that's tiny to us, but
Speaker 1: much larger millions of times the size of the bacteria.
Speaker 1: So it's bacteria which you cannot see without my powerful microscope,
Speaker 1: moving something that's bigger than dust might Yeah, which that's
Speaker 1: that's amazing. Yeah, so you you'd have to think about,
Speaker 1: you know, get all the people you have ever seen
Speaker 1: in your life together and moving the empire state building. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you're talking about and even then, you're not
Speaker 1: talking about millions of times your size, right, So it
Speaker 1: is a pretty phenomenal thing. And uh, if we're able
Speaker 1: to make that useful in some way beyond getting hits
Speaker 1: on YouTube, that's awesome. I think it's awesome either way.
Speaker 1: Like Joe just just stares at me, like I just
Speaker 1: stared at him. Yeah, I'm gonna punch you after this.
Speaker 1: Um well, no, in the next podcast we're actually going
Speaker 1: to talk about one amazing possible future application. But yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but these are I mean, if we we've talked about,
Speaker 1: or at least we've we've all heard about things like
Speaker 1: nano machines, you know, whether they're nano robots or whatever,
Speaker 1: we always imagine them as synthetic. They're little things we
Speaker 1: build like little robots. That right, But we could end
Speaker 1: up using a mixture of synthetic and biological. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's far more more likely that we will use biological
Speaker 1: material in those those devices, because Nature's built some pretty
Speaker 1: amazing tiny, tiny tiny things that work really really well.
Speaker 1: Well we have, I mean, one thing that I talked
Speaker 1: about when I was writing this episode of the video
Speaker 1: series is that it's funny how we have total intuition
Speaker 1: when it comes to engineering things on on the proper scale,
Speaker 1: the macro scale. Yeah, things that are about the same
Speaker 1: size as us. This all makes sense, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this gear turns, this thing, It all just works. It
Speaker 1: makes sense. It's it's intuitive. Yeah. Um, when you get
Speaker 1: down small enough that all breaks down. You just can't
Speaker 1: do it. We're not good at making things that work
Speaker 1: on a tiny, tiny, tiny scale. It requires such a
Speaker 1: level of precision, and also the rules if you get
Speaker 1: small enough, the rules change. So but if we look
Speaker 1: to nature, you know, nature is already there are already
Speaker 1: examples of stuff in nature that show that this can work.
Speaker 1: And so either we can take that and manipulate it
Speaker 1: in some way, or we emulate it in some way
Speaker 1: and therefore can make uh, our own nano machines and
Speaker 1: UH and I imagine that a lot of our at
Speaker 1: least our early work in nanotechnology will still focus on
Speaker 1: the biological element and it won't be you know, because
Speaker 1: that just makes more sense than to go completely synthing. Alright, Well,
Speaker 1: I think that that wraps up our discussion about kind
Speaker 1: of the crazy stuff that we're doing with microbes and bacteria.
Speaker 1: If you guys have suggestions for future episodes of Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: you know there's something about the future that you're really
Speaker 1: interested in. There's an application or a technology, or maybe
Speaker 1: it's just something that you're concerned about uh and about
Speaker 1: our future, and you want us to to address it,
Speaker 1: you should let us know. We have an email address.
Speaker 1: Our email addresses f W Thinking at discovery dot com,
Speaker 1: or go to f W Thinking dot com and just
Speaker 1: check out. We've got the blogs there, we've got the videos,
Speaker 1: we've got this podcast is there. We also have links
Speaker 1: to our social media. You can get in touch with
Speaker 1: us on any of those platforms as well. We'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you, and we look forward to talking
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. For more on this topic
Speaker 1: and the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com.
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