Magnetic Bacteria To Sow Seeds For A Biological Hard Drive
Your hard drive could not survive a virus attack, eh? Worry not. 'Cos the day's not far when bacteria shall be making you a larger and better hard drive. A team at the University of Leeds, UK, have devised a way where the creations of nature shall aid in developing one.
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Sarah Staniland, leading the research, stated that nature has had billions of years to experiment and evolve, and it makes sense to employ whatever the nature could make up by now. And nature did evolve some specific kinds of bacteria that draw up iron to create magnetic nano-particles which guided the team in employing the Earth's magnetic field. The team took out the protein responsible for this process and utilized it to make magnetic patterns capable of storing data.
Hard drive generally are made by "sputtering", wherein masses of argon ions are shot at a sheet of magnetic substance, taking down particles which are accumulated as a thin film on a disc. Cluster of these particles, termed grains, make up the magnetic regions on the drive, with nearly 100 grains making up one bit. As an alternate to granular media, Staniland's team fashioned out bit-patterned media. The process starts with a gold surface covered in chemicals in a chess-board order, so that when one square holds together the proteins, the other fights them off. Later the magnet-producing protein is applied, and the surface is covered with an iron solution, where the squares holding together all the protein transforming into magnetic substances.
#-Link-Snipped-#
Sarah Staniland, leading the research, stated that nature has had billions of years to experiment and evolve, and it makes sense to employ whatever the nature could make up by now. And nature did evolve some specific kinds of bacteria that draw up iron to create magnetic nano-particles which guided the team in employing the Earth's magnetic field. The team took out the protein responsible for this process and utilized it to make magnetic patterns capable of storing data.
Hard drive generally are made by "sputtering", wherein masses of argon ions are shot at a sheet of magnetic substance, taking down particles which are accumulated as a thin film on a disc. Cluster of these particles, termed grains, make up the magnetic regions on the drive, with nearly 100 grains making up one bit. As an alternate to granular media, Staniland's team fashioned out bit-patterned media. The process starts with a gold surface covered in chemicals in a chess-board order, so that when one square holds together the proteins, the other fights them off. Later the magnet-producing protein is applied, and the surface is covered with an iron solution, where the squares holding together all the protein transforming into magnetic substances.
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