A CAMERA that takes four hours to take a picture and only works in red light doesn't sound like a whole lot of use on the face of it.
But the "living camera", which records high-resolution images on a film of light-sensitive bacteria, could allow nano-materials to be produced with unprecedented precision.
The camera, developed by Chris Voigt and colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, uses light to switch on genes in genetically modified bacteria, which in turn produce a dark chemical that records the image. Because the bacteria are so small, the sensor has a resolution of 100 megapixels per square inch (Nature, vol 438, p 441).
To make their novel biosensor, Voigt's team implanted genes from photosynthesising cyanobacteria into the cell membranes of E. coli bacteria. One gene was for a red light sensor, and the other was a gene that is switched on when the ...
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