All living organisms need energy. Most animals get their energy by eating other organisms. Plants manufacture energy from sunlight. Now, scientists are finding a strange form of bacterial life that dines on unadulterated electricity.
But the fact the bacteria live on electricity isn’t the weird part.
We all fundamentally live on electricity. Whereas, human metabolism is a complex dance shuttling electrons between sugar and oxygen—the bacteria cut to the chase, eating and excreting electrons. In their research, UCLA scientists Kenneth Nealson and his PhD student Annette Rowe have found eight types of electric bacteria.
“This is huge,” says Nealson. “What it means is that there’s a whole part of the microbial world that we don’t know about.”
via Singularity Hub
