In the future, ultra-high-density non-volatile storage — such as hard drives — could be grown using magnetic bacteria.
This breakthrough, shepherded by researchers from the University of Leeds in the UK and the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, relies on certain strains of bacteria that ingest iron, which is then converted into magnetite (iron II, III oxide), the most magnetic naturally occurring mineral on Earth.
These microbes, by following the Earth’s magnetic field, use this built-in magnet to navigate.
