livia's chemistry: extra credit assignment #1

A new way of making computer memory cards, using bacteria.

A group of researches at the University of Leeds, in Britain, discovered naturally occurring proteins that make arrays of tiny magnets, similar to those made to store information in memory cards.
The researchers took their inspiration from Magnetospirillum magneticum, which is a bacterium that is sensitive to the Earth's magnetic field. Using genetic engineering, the team induced another bacterium- Escherichia coli, to manufacture the bulk of this protein.
The researchers imprinted a block of gold with a microscopic chessboard pattern of chemicals. Then they dipped the gold into a solution containing the protein and allowed it to bind to the squares, and put the entire composition in a heated solution of iron salts. After examining the results with a microscope, they discovered that the groups of magnetite grains had materialized on the treated squares, which were put into place by the bacterial protein.
The grains of magnetite are not yet magnetically strong enough to make a useful memory card that could be placed in a real computer.
The advantage of the process is that growing the cards would not be as laborious as constructing a fab, which is where the process of microchip fabrication takes place. "Growing" a chip is essentially easier than making one.

In my opinion, I think that the idea of growing memory cards using bacterial protein is an innovative concept. It could potentially be less expensive, more efficient, and less time consuming than the standard process of creating a microchip, which could benefit the economy immensely.

livia's chemistry