Viruses Engineered to Construct Batteries

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at MIT have modified the M13 virus to create very small batteries. With the viruses building wires 6 nanometers in diameter, the research team hopes to 'build batteries that range from the size of a grain of rice up to the size of existing hearing-aid batteries.'"

Dynamic ICs

[AnalystX]

I'm more interested in dynamic processors. I wonder how long it would take for a virus to complete in hardware what Transmeta does in software.

Amusing

[Anonymous Coward]

But how much power would the 'rice grain battery' put out?

Re:Lemme see here..

[Frenchman113]

The real question is what's the point of this? The only reason I can think of that this might be better than just building batteries (wires and all) is that the viruses self replicate, but still, this is hardly a breakthrough.

Animal to Computer Virus?

[kartack]

I wonder if they can make a virus that creates a battery could they make one that somehow alters a computer? Could we then see the world's first animal to computer transmission. I hope no one with the kind of technical abilities to do such a thing is actually reading this.

Yahoo article misses a point, see original paper

[mapkinase]

I am not solid state physicist, but IMHO, Yahoo News article misses one of major points of the ScienceExpress paper: the virus-based batteries have better quality capacity than the SAME size inorganic material only-based batteries (only anode was virus based, catode was solid inorganic material).

You do not need to use viruses to produce small batteries, you need them to improve small batteries.

Re:Amusing

[hey!]

Presumably enough to run a very small machine.

If these machines can be "manufactured" in sufficiently large numbers, perhaps by some self-assembly process, then you have the power source for a swarm of robot ants or termites, which collectively have the power to transform things on a larger scale.