MIT Researchers Harness Viruses To Split Water

ByronScott writes "A team of researchers at MIT has just announced that they have successfully modified a virus to split apart molecules of water, paving the way for an efficient and non-energy-intensive method of producing hydrogen fuel. 'The team, led by Angela Belcher, the Germeshausen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biological Engineering, engineered a common, harmless bacterial virus called M13 so that it would attract and bind with molecules of a catalyst (the team used iridium oxide) and a biological pigment (zinc porphyrins). The viruses became wire-like devices that could very efficiently split the oxygen from water molecules. Over time, however, the virus-wires would clump together and lose their effectiveness, so the researchers added an extra step: encapsulating them in a microgel matrix, so they maintained their uniform arrangement and kept their stability and efficiency.'"

Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

engineered a common, harmless bacterial virus

I am not a scientist, but isn't this how every zombie movie starts out? Today we get hydrogen fuel; tomorrow we get zombie outbreaks. At least we can use the fuel to escape, I guess.

There has got to be a missing step

[Brett Buck]

It still takes energy to split the molecule, and it has to come from somewhere, even if viruses to the dirty work.

Re:Hopefully they aren't too effective..

[goombah99]

first it's not the virus that is doing anything. it's just a scaffold. the virus just self-assembles the scaffold for you. the interior DNA / RNA is irrelevant.

that said, the design for the self assembly and display is in the virus DNA I believe. so given a host to express itself in, it could presumably reproduce this in the wild. it would not be any use to the virus. But you could imagine that some host cell might harness the virus to make hydrogen for it's own purposes.

So I suspect that if this gets loose in the wild that the virus won't keep this trait long enough for some host cell to adapt to taking advantage of it.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[JesseMcDonald]

Sure, except for this bit:

Over time, however, the virus-wires would clump together and lose their effectiveness, so the researchers added an extra step: encapsulating them in a microgel matrix, so they maintained their uniform arrangement and kept their stability and efficiency.

If this virus ever got loose it would no longer be inside the microgel matrix, so it would soon lose its efficiency at generating hydrogen, becoming just another virus among many—and one ill-adapted to survive outside a lab.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the net effect is a positive for the virus, the behavior would have evolved on it's own in nature.

Evolution does not guarantee that any given mutation will occur.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[blair1q]

1. it's not self-catalyzing, it takes iridium oxide which is what you might call highly uncommon (though they implied there might be others, but if they needed to start with Ir02 the list must have been very very short)

2. they didn't say under what conditions it reproduces, but i wouldn't be surprised if the open ocean isn't its best culture medium, or even a decent one

3. in order to get it to work for any sort of duration they had to encase the virus in a gel. now, unless they plan to mutate the virus to produce its own gel, or not to need the gel, it's not going to threaten very much of any body of water

4. we could use a little more oxygen, as ours is being bound up into CO2 by people who persist in believing that burning coal & oil is a god-given right

Re:Hopefully they aren't too effective..

[lorenlal]

Screw the ocean, I'm plenty worried about me.

Am I not about 70% water?

Re:Personally...

[ElectricTurtle]

ATTN: All people including parent who don't understand how long and with how much effort a virus needs to effectively cross barriers between species of hosts (let alone viruses like these that affect prokaryotic bacteria jumping to fucking eukaryotic animals! Are you kidding me?)

Please STFU. You paranoia is sourced in horror movies and cheap sci-fi novellas. Go read about real microbiology. Thanks.

Re:Good news!

[bdenton42]

You don't need a virus to do that... just a match.

Re:Hopefully they aren't too effective..

[ElectricTurtle]

Hey guess what Mr. Gloom & Doom: the P-Tr extinction about 250 million years ago killed 96% of all marine species without our help, and you know how empty the oceans are now? Oh, that's right, speciation naturally filled the hole, once again without our help. If the environment changes and things die, whatever doesn't die will change to meet the needs of the new environment so long as there are resources to consume. The end.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[chammel]

Yea they are called plants.

Re:Hopefully they aren't too effective..

[ElectricTurtle]

Does it matter? Those events were catalytic in creating the biosphere of today. If today's biosphere is valuable, we owe it to those events. People need to get over extinctions. Extinctions are natural, they have happened to 99% of all species that once lived on earth over geologic time. Without the mass extinction caused by the oxygen catastrophe of the Siderian period, no animal life as we know it would exist on earth. Even though it seems contradictory, extinction demonstrably enables the advancement of life, just different forms of life.

Re:Hopefully they aren't too effective..

[Qzukk]

Does it matter? Those events were catalytic in creating the biosphere of today. If today's biosphere is valuable, we owe it to those events.

If today's biosphere is valuable and it took millions of years to make it that way since the last "event", then if we cause another such "event", tomorrow's biosphere won't be quite so valuable to us.

Re:Hopefully they aren't too effective..

[ElectricTurtle]

You are placing everything into your specific emotional context. Thing is, natural processes don't care about your emotional context. It wouldn't matter how cute you thought mammoths were, they simply were no long a viable species in the biosphere. There are no 'good' species or 'bad' species, just the successful ones that live, and the unsuccessful ones that die. And if you like diversity, you should know that regardless of the fact that 99% of species that have ever lived are now extinct, the rate of speciation and the total number of species has always increased over geologic time.

Re:Hopefully they aren't too effective..

[gyrogeerloose]

No, I think you are approximately 90% FUD and 10% skin.

Old Romulan Proverb: "Humans are a waste of skin."

So where does that leave him?

Yes, but I would emotionally prefer to live.

[tjstork]

I'm no big tree hugger, but as an animal I have come to form an emotional relationship with the earth and I would prefer that while, we recognize that changes to come to the environment and biosphere, that, we not go around pissing on things all over the place either. Like, I don't think its entirely wrong to ask people to respect the world they live in. Like, I never understood how my fellow right wingers could be so up and up on God, and not ponder for a moment that the earth should be respected because it is His gift to us. I would expect them to be leading the charge on the environment, not dragging their feet on it.

Re:Hopefully they aren't too effective..

[NeutronCowboy]

Does it matter?

It matters to me. If tomorrow's biosphere doesn't support my existence, you can bet your ass that I care about the continuation of today's biosphere. It's nice that you support the grand scale view that ultimately, life will continue, but I'm kinda selfishly interested in the continued existence of me and that of my off-spring. Which, you know, happens to be the mechanism behind every life form that ever existed.

Re:Hopefully they aren't too effective..

[MaskedSlacker]

You have to admit, it'd be one HELL of a bonfire...