The gears rotate on average about once or twice a minute, depending on the type of gear, oxygen available, and other variables. "Sometimes bacteria are not in a good mood," Aronson jokes. "More precisely, with biological species you have great variation from different colonies."

"It's not like a physics experiment, when you do something and have the same results every day. These are creatures, they have their own agenda," he says.


Applications

While getting energy from the bacteria machines isn't practical, Aronson says, as they only seem to generate about 10 to the minus 15 of a watt, they could be used to make infinitesimally tiny machines for mixing chemicals or controlling microfluidic devices. Or more likely, creating hybrid materials incorporating biological elements, Aronson says.

Right now, though, Aronson is most interested in something he says seems like "science fiction": getting the bacteria to build their own gears. While it sounds strange, Aronson says many bacteria build their own flagella "motors," the tiny hair-like threads that move them around. He thinks bacteria could be made to create components of gears that they would somehow glom onto and then gradually assemble.

But the bacteria-built gears and even the germ-powered mini-machines are not going to appear any time soon, he thinks. "Of course, we are far away," Aronson says. "It's probably not a 'tomorrow' development, it'll probably be ten years before you see devices in stores."

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