A single nanocluster of 22 gold atoms — Au22 — is only 1 nanometer in diameter, allowing it to easily slip through the bacterial cell wall.
Credit: Peidong Yang, UC Berkeley
Harvesting solar fuels through a bacterium’s unusual appetite for gold. Scientists have placed light-absorbing gold nanoclusters inside a bacterium, creating a biohybrid system that produces a higher yield of chemical products, such as biofuels, than previously demonstrated. The biohybrid captures sunlight and carbon dioxide to make chemicals useful not only on Earth but also in the exotic environment of space.
Moorella thermoacetica first made its debut as the first non-photosensitive bacterium to carry out artificial photosynthesis in a study led by Peidong Yang, a professor in UC Berkeley’s College of Chemistry...
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