Bacteria have been harnessed as miniature pumps for the first time. The trick was to trap a squirming army of bacteria on a chip, and then get their flagella to pump fluid through channels thinner than a human hair.
Kenneth Breuer and colleagues at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, squirted a concentrated solution of the naturally sticky bacteria Serratia mercescens into transparent rubber channels embedded in a glass chip. The bugs formed a “bacterial carpet” on the surface of the channels, leaving their 12-micrometre-long flagella, which they usually use to swim, free to move. They were able to…
