Show Notes 17 March 2023
Story 1: Someday your desk lamp may be a house plant!
Source: MIT News Story by Anne Trafton
Link: https://tinyurl.com/auccexdm
See video here: https://tinyurl.com/387r4y4f
- Lighting accounts for about 20 percent of worldwide energy consumption. So, what if we could reduce that with plants that glow in the dark?
- So, imagine that instead of switching on a lamp when it gets dark, you could read by the light of a glowing plant on your desk.
- By embedding specialized nanoparticles into the leaves of a watercress plant, engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have induced the plant to give off dim light for nearly four hours.
- That’s not enough to be significant, but the team believes that with further optimization such plants will one day be bright enough to illuminate a workspace powered by the energy metabolism of the plant itself.
- This fascinating research is all about something called plant nanobionics, which is a new research area pioneered by MIT that aims to give plants novel features by embedding them with different types of nanoparticles.
- To create their glowing plants, the MIT team used three ingredients:
- First luciferase, the enzyme that gives fireflies their glow,
- Next, a molecule called luciferin which causes the luciferase to emit light,
- And finally, another molecule called co-enzyme A which helps the process along by removing an element that inhibits luciferase activity.
- The MIT team packaged each of these three components into a different type of nanoparticle carrier.
- When I read this, I thought it’s kind of like grafting a feature from an insect into a plant!
- The researchers also figured out a way to prevent these ingredients from reaching concentrations that could be toxic to the plants.
- The MIT team believes this technology could be scaled up and ultimately go beyond indoor lighting to someday create large trees that could function as self-powered streetlights!
Story 2: Scientists discover an enzyme that can use air to generate electricity
Source: Popular Science Story by Jackie Appel
Source: Gizmodo.com Story by Kevin Hurler
Link: https://gizmodo.com/natural-enzyme-huc-generate-electricity-from-air-1850207533
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC3ATunzd_8
- Here’s another amazing enzyme-related story!
- A team of researchers [led by scientists at the Monash University Biomedicine Discovery Institute in Melbourne, Australia] recently discovered an enzyme that can convert air directly into an electrical current.
- An enzyme is a substance produced by a living organism which acts as a catalyst to bring about a biochemical reaction.
- It’s an enzyme called Huc – that’s H u c – [which is an enzyme found in Mycobacterium smegmatis, a common soil bacteria].
- The Huc enzyme enables bacteria to get some of the energy they need to survive right out of the atmosphere.
- By studying the movement of electrons, they found that a Huc enzyme alone was able to convert extremely small amounts of hydrogen in the air into electrical currents by oxidizing hydrogen without allowing the presence of other substances to disrupt the process. And it’s really good at its job.
- he Huc enzyme is not only efficient at turning hydrogen into electricity—it’s also stable.
- You can freeze the Huc enzyme or heat it to 80 degrees Celsius [that’s 176 degrees Fahrenheit] and it retains its ability to generate energy.
- So, from a practical energy-generation standpoint, this means the Huc enzyme doesn’t need to be kept at special temperatures or storage conditions to do its work.
- And as the Huc enzyme is found in common soil bacteria, it’s a readily available resource.
- By fully exploiting the amazing potential of the Huc enzyme, the Monash University team hopes to someday see electronic devices powered entirely using just the air around us!
Story 3: Scientists have devised a way to 3D print “biomaterial” inside the human body
Source: Futurism.com Story by Victor Tangermann
Link: https://futurism.com/neoscope/scientists-3d-print-inside-human-body
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvoxI7qkRfE
- Here’s another fascinating breakthrough from Australia!
- A team of engineers at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, has developed a tiny, flexible, endoscopic-like robotic arm that can 3D print biomaterial directly on the surface of organs inside a person’s body.
- First, what’s a “biomaterial”? Biomaterial refers to a synthetic or natural material suitable for use in constructing artificial organs and prostheses or to replace bone or tissue.
- Existing 3D bioprinting techniques require biomaterials to be made outside the body and implanting that into a person would usually require large open-field open surgery which increases infection risks.
- The futuristic device acts just like an endoscope and can snake its way into a specific location inside the patient’s body to deliver layers of special biomaterial to reconstruct tissue, clean up wounds, and even make precise incisions — an amazing jack-of-all-trades they say could revolutionize certain types of surgery.
- When it reaches its target area it can 3D print biomaterial for a variety of purposes, including the reconstruction of wounds, such as gastric wall injuries or damage inside the colon.
Story 4: Scientists announce ‘organoid intelligence’ as a potential biological alternative to artificial intelligence
Source: CNN Story by Ashley Strickland
Link: https://tinyurl.com/bd4kmyyb
Source: Johns Hopkins website
Link: https://caat.jhsph.edu/programs/oi/
Source: Popular Mechanics Story by Jackie Appel
See video here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/news/scientists-believe-organoid-intelligence-is-the-future-of-computing/vi-AA18jKN7?ocid=sapphireappshare&t=19
- Okay, I saved the weirdest news for last!
- Computers powered by human brain cells may sound like science fiction, but a team of pioneering researchers at Johns Hopkins University believes such machines, part of a new field called “organoid intelligence,” could shape the future.
- First, what are organoids? Organoids are lab-grown tissues that resemble organs.
- These small three-dimensional structures, usually derived from stem cells, have been used in labs for nearly two decades to help avoid harmful human or animal testing by experimenting on them as stand-ins for kidneys, lungs, and other organs.
- Professor Dr. Thomas Hartung at Johns Hopkins University [and the Whiting School of Engineering in Baltimore], who is leading the research team, defines organoid intelligence as “reproducing cognitive functions, such as learning and sensory processing, in a lab-grown human-brain model.”
- So, what we’re talking about here is the goal to grow experimental, interconnected clumps of brain organoids and then create technology that would make it possible to turn those clumps of brain cells into powerful and efficient computers.
- Brain organoids don’t actually resemble tiny versions of the human brain, but the pen dot-size cell cultures contain neurons that are capable of brain like functions, forming a multitude of connections.
- Okay, reality check: the research team stresses this is very early-stage work, with a lot of hurdles to be conquered.
- For example, to make an organoid intelligence “brain” a reality would require a huge scaling up. Each organoid is too small, containing about 50,000 cells. For fully viable organoid intelligence system or “brain” the researchers say that number would need to increase by a factor of 10 million.
- Another big challenge – finding ways to communicate with the brain organoids in order to send them information and receive readouts of what the organoids are “thinking.”
- Okay, my take on this — I can see good and scary possibilities.
- On the positive side the research team noted one of a host of application possibilities could be using brain organoids developed from skin samples of patients with neural disorders to test how different medicines and other factors could impact them.
- And brain organoids could also open up a new way of understanding human cognition.