Ep 75: Electricity life and Frankensteinean experiments
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:35 — 5.2MB) | Embed
Electricity life and Frankensteinean experiments
A stun gun works by passing electricity through your muscles, causing uncontrollable contractions. An electric eel, which is actually a type of fish, can do the same thing. There is a single celled creature that can conduct electrons from hydrogen sulfide in the soil, to oxygen dissolved in the water. Almost every living cell has an electric charge. Multicellular life has found a way to use electricity to send long distance messages from one part of the organism to another. Today, we talk about electricity, life, and some slightly grotesque experiments that have been done with the relationship between the two.
Here’s an article on electric currents applied to recently deceased human body’s, that caused them to move.
1800s doctors conducted weird electrical experiments on corpse brains
Here are a couple of articles about single celled life and nanowires that they grow to conduct electricity.
Bacteria buzzing in the seabed
Biological wires carry electricity thanks to special amino acids
Here’s an article about experiments done that altered the electrical properties of cells that changed the way the organism grew. This included eyes on the tales of tadpoles, and hints of being able to regrow severed limbs in creatures that do not normally possess such a capacity.
It’s Electric: Biologists Seek to Crack Cell’s Bioelectric Code