microbes

While the term "gold prospector" still evokes the image of a weathered frontiersman biting into a rock, advances in biology have now created a prospector that more closely resembles E. coli than a grizzled Forty-Niner. By modifying a bacterium that finds gold toxic, Frank Reith, a geologist at the University of Adelaide, Australia, has created a microbe with an eye for gold that would put Deadwood's George Hearst to shame.

Geobacter, a microbe that generates electricity when placed in mud and wastewater, has been evolved into a far more productive strain, as part of a new University of Massachusetts breakthrough that has researchers thinking of new fuel cell designs.

Science Daily says that Geobacter is about 3-5 nanometers in diameter, which is about 20,000 times finer than a human hair. Geobacter is known for its ability to transfer electrons, which enables it to "extract" energy from biomass.

Its a drizzly morning on New Yorks Upper East Side, and Rockefeller University microbiologist David Thaler is sipping a double espresso amid the retro-hippie pillows and dangling paper stars of Java Girl, a favorite haunt of the neighborhoods brainiac Nobel laureates, aging poets and famous entertainers. Thaler somehow manages to embody all three—a long, graying ponytail curling down the middle of his back, wire-frame glasses askew over expansive brown eyes, and a schnozz to rival an Einstein, Ginsberg or Allen. Thaler is one of the leading cheerleaders for a new field of biotechnology aimed at engineering the bacteria inside us to deliver drugs, destroy tumors, actively fight infection, and even vaccinate against their disease-causing kin.

In February, researchers at UCLA announced a clash of the titans, biochemically speaking: They turned one of the great scourges of humankind—HIV—into a hunter of another: cancer. In tests on mice afflicted with metastatic melanoma, a modified strain of HIV invaded cancer cells without infecting the rodents with AIDS.