This image shows silhouettes of several gear designs that could be turned by Bacillus subtilis bacteria. (Image: Courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory)
Organisms turn microgears in suspended solution by swimming A scientist from Princeton University, working with researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University, has discovered that common bacteria can turn microgears when suspended in a solution, providing insights for design of bio-inspired dynamically adaptive materials for energy. "On the fundamental level, our work demonstrates that mechanical energy can be extracted from - the random motion of self-propelled particles under certain conditions," said Andrey Sokolov , a postdoctoral research associate in Princeton's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology . A paper on this research was published in the Dec. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The microgears with slanted spokes were placed in the solution along with the common aerobic bacteria, Bacillus subtilis. Sokolov, along with Igor Aronson from Argonne and Bartosz Grzybowski and Mario Apodaca from Northwestern, discovered that the bacteria appear to swim around the solution randomly, but occasionally the organisms will collide with the spokes of the gear and begin turning it in a definite direction. This image shows silhouettes of several gear designs that could be turned by Bacillus subtilis bacteria.
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