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The bionic mushroom created by the researchers. (Credit: American Chemical Society)
"Power mushrooms" sounds like something out of Super Mario, but a lab in New Jersey has made them a reality.
A few years ago, a team at the Stevens Institute of Technology was able to engineer a symbiotic relationship between the common button mushroom, some cyanobacteria and a few electrodes made of "graphene nanoribbons" (GNRs). ) – basically really thin layers of electrically conductive carbon atoms.
As a paper in Nano Letters makes clear, the results are a success and the researchers created a living mushroom that can turn light into harvest-able electricity. As a certain mustachioed plumber might say: "Yahoo!
Mushroom Magic
To achieve their fungal feat, which the team insists on calling a mushroom bionic (guess they never had a Nintendo growing up), they turned to the near-magic technology of 3-D printing. They have a mushroom button, printed in a pattern of Fibonacci (inspired by nature), then printed the bacteria using "bioink" in a spiral shape on top.
All of these details were carefully chosen. The mushroom is better than artificial materials with similar shapes and nutrients. Cyanobacteria were the perfect choice because they are so good at photosynthesis, "with an unmatched internal quantum efficiency of nearly 100%" according to the authors. Bascially, the tiny things are evolving to be good at turning light into energy. The GNRs were specifically engineered to be efficiently transported electricity noninvasively, and the different patterns of GNRs and bacteria to interact at multiple points.
Altogether, the team established what they call an "engineered bionic symbiosis," combining natural and artificial components into one viable, stable network. Once they got all the right wires connected, they could shine a light on the mushroom, and when the cyanobacteria produced electric current, the GNRs would transport it off the mushroom's cap and through the wires into the instruments.
Power-Ups
True, it was only around 67 nanoAmps of current, but still, the point is that it works. As the study's writers, "The presently developed 3D printed bionic mushroom architecture is an environment-friendly and green source of photosynthetic bioelectricity." day power our electronics.
But the other exciting thing is that the idea of engineering bionic symbiosis, and 3-D printing these things into being, really works. "We believe that these techniques can be extended to other bacterial colonies," the authors continues. "Moreover, we consider that the three-dimensional bacterial nanomaterial approaches to bacterial and other biologic mechanisms, and other bioluminescence and virulence."
So the sky's the limit in terms of what kind of technology can accomplish. It's enough to make even the Mario Bros. jealous.
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