Tiny magnets form inside magnetic bacteria.
Magnet-making bacteria may be building biological computers of the future, researchers have said.
A team from the UK's University of Leeds and Japan's Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology have used microbes that eat iron.
As they ingest the iron, the microbes create tiny magnets inside themselves, similar to those in PC hard drives.
The research may lead to the creation of much faster hard drives, the team of scientists say.
As technology progresses and computer components get smaller and smaller, it becomes harder to produce electronics on a nano-scale.
So researchers are now turning to nature - and get microbes involved.
In the current study, the scientists used the bacterium Magnetospirilllum magneticum.
These naturally magnetic microorganisms usually live in aquatic environments such as ponds and lakes, below the surface where oxygen is scarce.
“Start Quote
We are quickly reaching the limits of traditional electronic manufacturing as computer components get smaller... Nature has provided us with the perfect tool to [deal with] this problem”
Dr Sarah StanilandUniversity of Leeds
They swim only up and down following the Earth's magnetic field lines, aligning in the magnetic field like compass needles, in search of preferred oxygen concentrations.
When the bacteria ingest iron, proteins inside their bodies interact with it to produce tiny crystals of the mineral magnetite, the most magnetic mineral on Earth.
Having studied the way the microbes collect, shape and position these nano-magnets inside themselves, the researchers copied the method and applied it outside the bacteria, effectively "growing" magnets that could in future help to build hard drives.
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