"Super Cells"! Single Celled Organisms that can Make Oil, Cure Cancer, and Build a City

We believe multi-cellular organization is where it's at, with our mesoderms and our Mercedes, but there are some super-powered single cells which are far more than meets the unaided eye.  We might think their mightiest power is confining us to the bathroom after an ill-advised late night snack, but having only one cell to deal with means bacteria can adapt incredibly well - and a single mutation can give rise to powers that make Professor Xavier's wheelchair-accessible mansion look like a home for people who are good at minigolf.  Here we look at five organisms that would be called the Super-Cells, if that name wasn't probably already taken by Michael Crichton.

1) Eat Radiation

Humans have only three responses responses to radioactive waste: pay someone else to take it away quickly, die, or develop superpowers. Unfortunately the last option has a vanishingly small success rate and the tragic side-effect of utterly destroying the victims fashion sense.  Luckily a species of bacteria with the ability to consume uranium and other extremely antisocial wastes has been discovered by US scientists - and as a bonus, it's utterly impossible to make a crap movie adaptation of a bacteria.

Geobacter sulfurreducens has already been used at the Rifle Mills site to clear up a large amount of what the nuclear industry calls "oops!", and what us non-radioactive humans call "a goddamn nuclear contamination of groundwater and the Colorado river". Following on the brave scientific tradition of not only looking a gift horse in the mouth but sending it to the vet for a full set of dental X-rays, some scientists suggest the metal-munching microbe could form the basis for a bio-battery cell.  Because when you've fed a superpowered organism nothing but nuclear waste for years, nothing can go wrong with then sticking it in a box and carrying it around with you.

2) Generate Electricity

For those who prefer not to expose living creatures to nuclear radiation (environmental activists, vets, those living in areas threatened by Godzilla), scientists at Penn State have played microbial matchmaker - pairing bacteria which can work together to consume cellulose and generate electricity.  Such bio-electrical sources are gaining momentum as attempts to find non-petroleum based power sources: the cellulose-fuelled option is popular because of the large volumes available, either as waste from agriculture and food processing or harvested from renewable forests.

The production of energy from cellulose is a trick we've been trying to copy from termites for a while - though the idea of basing our energy economy on ravenous vermin would make Agent Smith shout "See!  I was right!"  Attempts to exactly replicate the mechanism used in insect stomachs have so far failed (and probably led to a few scientists wondering, in the dead of night, if this is what they really expected to be doing with their lives).  Many research efforts are now directed at finding a more manageable version of the same process, of which this binary design is one of the more unique.

3) Make oil without the inconvenient "millions of years" thing

In more proof that the line between being retarded or a genius is often whether people tell you to shut up before you try something, a geneticist and a biologist asked "Why don't we just make more petrol?" Before anybody could explain that you'd need a Delorean with an extremely large trunk, and that people would get annoyed when you started stealing animals just to dump them in a hole the cretaceous period, George Church and Chris Somerville of San Carlos-based firm LS9 engineered a form of E. Coli which produces hydrocarbon chains with promising petrol potential.

This work provides an interesting environmentalist dilemma - on the one hand it could eliminate the need for oil drilling altogether, but it would also remove the current impetus to develop alternative energy sources that don't depend on the "burn stuff and don't breathe the smoke" strategy.  Not to mention that a sentence involving "E.Coli", "petrol" and "genetically engineered" may well be enough to make an eco -activists head explode on the spot.

4) Cure cancer

The thing people forget is that killing cancer is easy.  Radiation, drugs, heat, cold, thumping it with lasers or ultrasonics or a baseball bast, it's just another cell and those things can't put up much of a fight against SCIENCE.  The problem isn't wiping out the tumours, it's the NOT killing everything they're attached to - healthy human cells which are unfortunately even more fragile.  People have this vision of cancer as a multi-headed chimeric hydra, a diabolical monster rearing over a small doctor armed only with a scalpel.  The reality is a lumberjack trying to kill one red ant among a thousand black ones he can't touch, and he's only got a sledgehammer, napalm and an ICBM missile to do it with.

Which is where clostridia step in.  A cell-sized secret agent, the bacteria can be injected into a patient armed with cancer-fighting genes.  As an anaerobic organism it will only replicate in low-oxygen environments - like the clumps of dead tissue found in tumors.  There they begin replicating and target the cancerous cells with the therapeutic genes engineered into them by the scientists at of Maastricht University.  Even better, these replication locations are the very sites where more conventional chemo- and radiation-therapy are least effective.  Whether this boon from the bacteria is coincidence, or an attempt by the single-cell samaritan to make up for it's antisocial clostridian cousins which cause tetanus and botulism, isn't known.

5) Build a city

Superman can punch whatever threatens him, and Batman is bound to have anticipated it, but very few individuals can react to a crisis by turning into a goddamn city.  And those who can (Metroplex of the Autobots and Jack Hawksmoor of the Authority) kick unreasonably large amounts of ass.  This dynamic duo is now joined by bacterial hordes such as the infamous E. Coli, after a research collaboration involving Johns Hopkins University, Virginia Tech, the University of California and Lund University.

We usually picture bacteria as solitary individuals - though since we usually only think of them when we're sick, we use much less printable words.  Recent results prove that they understand Sesame Street as well as any of us macroscale monkeys though, co-operating in times of crisis for the good of the whole.  They form highly organized structures called biofilms, mini-city analogs which can share food intake and waste disposal routes for the good of the whole colony.

Medical researchers are extremely interested in studying how these sickness-causing conurbations are formed, so that they can find better ways of preventing planning permission and destroying those unwanted urban zones for good.  After all, when you're suffering from a urinary tract infection the last thing you want to know is that every burning sensation is a block party for your unwelcome guests.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

Links:

Eat radiation
and maybe form a battery
Generate electricity
Grow gasoline
Cure cancer
Unicellular architects

Comments

[brooks]

A minor note: "mercedes" should be capitalized.

Otherwise...

"Humans have only three responses responses to radioactive waste: pay someone else to take it away quickly, die, or develop superpowers."

...pretty damn funny!

[Brian Timmins]

A serious science writer with a sense of humour... wonderful.

[James Woods]

Wow dude that is pretty cool man.

www.FIreMe.To/udi

[E]

Is this the same as "algae fuel"???

E

[youngladieseverywhere]

Single-celled organisms can't touch this!
http://www.girlsbeinghot.com

[boo]

Interesting article screwed by stupid 5 years old jokes (even taugh my ADD suffering friend below seems to like it). This was a pain in the ass to read, you try to write about science not the last year prom or "list of the top 5 mutant vilain".

[thesht]

I agree, this was a pain in the ass to read!

[Dante DeNavarre]

OK, so we needed to know what happens to the radiation the bacteria eat, and you meant "stealing animals just to dump them in a hole IN the cretaceous period" and maybe "..macroscale monkeys though," should be "- thought," but overall very clever and amusingly written.

Especially enjoyed the gift horse, DeLorean, exploding heads and lumberjack metaphors; and the electric power and cancer fighting potential is phenomenal, BUT
we need to read the following crux phenomenon once again, slowly and thoughtfully - it's not just a cutesy science "discovery":

"They form highly organized structures ... mini-city analogs which can share food intake and waste disposal routes for the good of the whole colony."

THAT is consciousness. NOT the blindly forced robotics that put graphics on your computer screen - the truly artificial intelligence.

Why is consciousness taboo in science outside our selfish, arrogant heads?
( except for our delusion that our glorified toasters - computers - can ever be conscious.)

So sad that science will jump on this "new" manifestation of consciousness only to learn new ways to stop it, rather than to recognize and understand it.

[annoyed]

if you just had one person proof read this once it would help ALOT, you need to make alot of corrections or your journalism isnt worth its content i we cant read it.

[upirons]

I agree that this was hard to read in places. You do need a good editor or even just a decent proofreader. I won't point out more mistakes than have already been pointed out other than to say that "ICBM Missle" is a redundant phrase, is it not?

[DG fan]

Hey annoyed, Why don't you proof read your comments! "your journalism isnt worth its content i we cant read it"
HA! HA! HA!

Hey DG, where is Rebecca Sato? I haven't seen any new articles from her for a while and they are the best.

[neki]

OK. Knock off critisizing the writing. Pay attention to the idea. Personally I think thats its a bit too far out there to be true.

P.S. Brian, a scientist with a sense of humor is alot easier to listen to then a scientist who decides to show off his ivy league education by speaking in french the whole dang time.

[M. Magnan]

Whenever people of education read something, they spend so much time critiquing spelling and syntax that they avoid the point of the article. Did any of you spellcheckers even understand the point? The writer is using humor to make the point stick in your brain and turns what could be dry info into something amusing and fast moving. Your comments make me wonder if you are just humorless boobs, or just did not understand the aritcle.

[M. Magnan]

Whenever people of education read something, they spend so much time critiquing spelling and syntax that they avoid the point of the article. Did any of you spellcheckers even understand the point? The writer is using humor to make the point stick in your brain and turns what could be dry info into something amusing and fast moving. Your comments make me wonder if you are just humorless boobs, or just did not understand the aritcle.