4 ms·

wow, i'm all for better batteries, but that's a lot of viral mass we're talking about. what are the potential consequences of producing tons of viral matter? a

by jaekwon 16y ago

wow, i'm all for better batteries, but that's a lot of viral mass we're talking about. what are the potential consequences of producing tons of viral matter? are we already doing this? and on a related note, i wonder how much viral mass a human gets when he/she is sick from a nasty flu.

StavrosK 16y ago
I guess the batteries will come with a warning: Do not disassemble battery near tobacco plantations. Relevant question: To recharge them, will you have to feed them?
- jaekwon 16y ago
  Well it's not so much the assembled batteries, but rather the accidents / malice that can happen at the, er, plants.
- btilly 16y ago
  Relevant question: To recharge them, will you have to feed them? No. Viruses do not have any sort of metabolism. They drift until they get into an appropriate target cell, at which point they hijack it and make it make more viruses. Therefore they do not need feeding at the best of times. However in this case the viruses are being used as convenient particles that will stick to the electrode. We do not care about the health and well-being of the viruses at all.
  - StavrosK 16y ago
    Oh, true, I didn't realise they were viruses. Here's hoping we see a commercially viable implementation soon, then!
JunkDNA 16y ago
There is a link in the article to a more detailed description of the process. Basically, the viruses are used as a structural component that is then coated with metal. They claim the viruses are inert after the process but don't elaborate. My guess is that either the act of coating the viruses damages them, or they intentionally irradiate them somehow to damage their genetic material. Obviously, production of large amounts of viruses in the wild would have to be tightly controlled. The problem with TMV is that you need to really grow the virus in a plant, you can't just grow a vat of the stuff in an industrial fermentation facility. TMV is used pretty regularly for research, so people do grow big quantities. Probably the biggest industrial virus production to date would be certain kinds of vaccine production. But those quantities are tiny compared with what you would need if everyone started using batteries like these.
sorbus 16y ago
My (possibly incorrect) understanding is that the only thing about the viruses which is important is that their capsules greatly increase the surface area; the genetic material inside is completely unnecessary. It is therefor an extremely small stretch of the imagination to suppose that they could be produced in massive quantities simply by adding a plasmid to bacteria which contains only the genetic code necessary for the creation of the capsule, which would in theory prevent them from being infectious. Some viral capsules do require dna or rna to be present inside them to function, however, so there are likely flaws in this idea, but keeping them nonvirulent would be a fairly simple matter.
flogic 16y ago
I suspect that at production levels you'll wind up encouraging a mono culture in the host cells. So, the viruses would be poorly suited to the real world.
jerf 16y ago
You speak as if "viral mass" is some sort of vital force or fundamental thing. The potential consequences of producing this much "viral matter" is that, well, batteries will work a lot better. That's pretty much it, really. It's not like the "viral mass" is going to reach out via its vital virusness and give you AIDS or something. By the time it's done being battery-ified it won't even be a virus anymore.
- jaekwon 16y ago
  I respectfully disagree. I would at least refer to a number of evolutionary biologists or geneticists to quantify the risks of generating such a significant mass of these things. I speak of "viral mass" as a proxy to number of viral bodies, which is probably proportional to its power to mutate and do something unexpected, not inside the batteries but rather in the production thereof. What are we going to do -- create a farm of infected tomato plants? Are we going to evolve the virus until it produces more bodies faster? I'm not so concerned about viruses that affect humans. I'm concerned about an epidemic of plant viruses, and everything we haven't thought about. I wish teflon stayed on surfaces, certain chemicals didn't deplete our ozone layer, that we didn't have to ask questions about man-made global warming. But to assume that the things we produce would only have the desired effects with total disregard for physics and biology is, well, absolutely stupid. On the other hand, I see this as an awesome opportunity to proceed with nanotechnology. After all, a virus is the ultimate self replicating robot.
catch23 16y ago
The original article explains this: http://www.eng.umd.edu/media/release.php?id=71 http://www.eng.umd.edu/media/release.php?id=71 "TMV becomes inert during the manufacturing process; the resulting batteries do not transmit the virus."

by jaekwon 16y ago

StavrosK 16y ago

I guess the batteries will come with a warning: Do not disassemble battery near tobacco plantations. Relevant question: To recharge them, will you have to feed them?

jaekwon 16y ago
Well it's not so much the assembled batteries, but rather the accidents / malice that can happen at the, er, plants.
btilly 16y ago
Relevant question: To recharge them, will you have to feed them? No. Viruses do not have any sort of metabolism. They drift until they get into an appropriate target cell, at which point they hijack it and make it make more viruses. Therefore they do not need feeding at the best of times. However in this case the viruses are being used as convenient particles that will stick to the electrode. We do not care about the health and well-being of the viruses at all.
- StavrosK 16y ago
  Oh, true, I didn't realise they were viruses. Here's hoping we see a commercially viable implementation soon, then!

JunkDNA 16y ago

There is a link in the article to a more detailed description of the process. Basically, the viruses are used as a structural component that is then coated with metal. They claim the viruses are inert after the process but don't elaborate. My guess is that either the act of coating the viruses damages them, or they intentionally irradiate them somehow to damage their genetic material. Obviously, production of large amounts of viruses in the wild would have to be tightly controlled. The problem with TMV is that you need to really grow the virus in a plant, you can't just grow a vat of the stuff in an industrial fermentation facility. TMV is used pretty regularly for research, so people do grow big quantities. Probably the biggest industrial virus production to date would be certain kinds of vaccine production. But those quantities are tiny compared with what you would need if everyone started using batteries like these.

sorbus 16y ago

My (possibly incorrect) understanding is that the only thing about the viruses which is important is that their capsules greatly increase the surface area; the genetic material inside is completely unnecessary. It is therefor an extremely small stretch of the imagination to suppose that they could be produced in massive quantities simply by adding a plasmid to bacteria which contains only the genetic code necessary for the creation of the capsule, which would in theory prevent them from being infectious. Some viral capsules do require dna or rna to be present inside them to function, however, so there are likely flaws in this idea, but keeping them nonvirulent would be a fairly simple matter.

flogic 16y ago

I suspect that at production levels you'll wind up encouraging a mono culture in the host cells. So, the viruses would be poorly suited to the real world.

jerf 16y ago

You speak as if "viral mass" is some sort of vital force or fundamental thing. The potential consequences of producing this much "viral matter" is that, well, batteries will work a lot better. That's pretty much it, really. It's not like the "viral mass" is going to reach out via its vital virusness and give you AIDS or something. By the time it's done being battery-ified it won't even be a virus anymore.

jaekwon 16y ago
I respectfully disagree. I would at least refer to a number of evolutionary biologists or geneticists to quantify the risks of generating such a significant mass of these things. I speak of "viral mass" as a proxy to number of viral bodies, which is probably proportional to its power to mutate and do something unexpected, not inside the batteries but rather in the production thereof. What are we going to do -- create a farm of infected tomato plants? Are we going to evolve the virus until it produces more bodies faster? I'm not so concerned about viruses that affect humans. I'm concerned about an epidemic of plant viruses, and everything we haven't thought about. I wish teflon stayed on surfaces, certain chemicals didn't deplete our ozone layer, that we didn't have to ask questions about man-made global warming. But to assume that the things we produce would only have the desired effects with total disregard for physics and biology is, well, absolutely stupid. On the other hand, I see this as an awesome opportunity to proceed with nanotechnology. After all, a virus is the ultimate self replicating robot.

catch23 16y ago

The original article explains this: http://www.eng.umd.edu/media/release.php?id=71 http://www.eng.umd.edu/media/release.php?id=71 "TMV becomes inert during the manufacturing process; the resulting batteries do not transmit the virus."