Researchers from Harvard’s Wyss Institute and several other universities have managed to generate electricity from a strip of latex rubber coated with bacterial spores. At the heart of this experiment we find Bacillus subtilis which is a harmless soil bacterium. These bacteria were chosen for this experiment due to their quirky survival technique. Whenever resources are scarce the bacteria tend to shrink into toughened spores which can handle any kind of natural assault. These spores respond to humidity. Whenever the air is dry they shrink and when exposed to moisture they plump up again. The researchers coated one side of the latex rubber sheet with these spores. Once dried these sheets curled up like dried leaves and once the humidity increased the sheet straightened out again. You can look at this process in the video below.


One of the researchers Ozgur Sahin added this sheet and built a humidity driven generator out of Legos. The bacteria spore coated rubber acted like a cantilever that flipped back and forth to drive a rotating magnet to produce electricity. The Lego nano-generator has been pictured below.


Once such a device is scaled up properly researchers predict that they can implement natural evaporation of water to a generate good amount of clean electricity.

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