<\/p>\n
<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A hair-like protein hidden inside bacteria serves as a sort of on-off switch for nature\u2019s \u201celectric grid,\u201d a global web of bacteria-generated nanowires that permeates all oxygen-less soil and deep ocean beds, Yale researchers report in the journal <i>Nature<\/i>. \u201cThe ground beneath our feet, the entire globe, is electrically wired,\u201d said Nikhil Malvankar, assistant professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry at the Microbial Sciences Institute at Yale\u2019s West Campus and senior author of the paper. \u201cThese previously hidden bacterial hairs are the molecular switch controlling the release of nanowires that make up nature\u2019s electrical grid.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Almost all living things breathe oxygen to get rid of excess electrons when converting nutrients into energy. Without access to oxygen, however, <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/soil+bacteria\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">soil bacteria<\/a> living deep under oceans or buried underground over billions of years have developed a way to respire by \u201cbreathing minerals,\u201d like snorkeling, through tiny protein filaments called <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/nanowires\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">nanowires<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Just how these soil bacteria use nanowires to exhale electricity, however, has remained a mystery. Since 2,005 scientists had thought that the nanowires are made up of a protein called \u201cpili\u201d (\u201chair\u201d in Latin) that many bacteria show on their surface. However, in research published <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cell.com\/cell\/fulltext\/S0092-8674(19)30291-0\">2019<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41589-020-0623-9\">2020<\/a>, a team led by Malvankar showed that nanowires are made of entirely different proteins. \u201cThis was a surprise to everyone in the field, calling into question <a href=\"https:\/\/scholar.google.com\/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C7&q=%22microbial+OR+Bacterial+nanowires%22&btnG=&oq=micro\">thousands of publications<\/a> about pili,\u201d Malvankar said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A hair-like protein hidden inside bacteria serves as a sort of on-off switch for nature\u2019s \u201celectric grid,\u201d a global web of bacteria-generated nanowires that permeates all oxygen-less soil and deep ocean beds, Yale researchers report in the journal Nature. \u201cThe ground beneath our feet, the entire globe, is electrically wired,\u201d said Nikhil Malvankar, assistant professor [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":621,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1497,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-energy","category-nanotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/621"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127077\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}