How could a radiowave controlled remote-controlled bacterium be possible? Criteria: The receiver for the radiowaves would not be bigger than the bacterium (which is the size of a cyanobacterium) The radiowave signals would control the bacterium's movements and also change dna info on the fly.
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4$\begingroup$ Hello @GrimmReaper18B. You've been very active for your first two days. Thank you! However, your questions appear to take the form of "How can my fantastic idea be realized in science?" In 99.9% of all cases, the fantastic idea cannot be realized in science. Worse, you've tagged your question hard-science. Have you read that tag's wiki? It requires respondents to prove they're right - which is impossible in cases like this - or face deletion. Please keep in mind that per the help center, we're here... (*Continued*) $\endgroup$– JBHCommented Jun 11, 2023 at 18:24
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1$\begingroup$ ... to help you build an imaginary world. Askig us to bring your fantasy into the Real World isn't our goal and, frankly, not a good fit for our site. If what you mean by all thi is that you want help rationalizing a cool idea, we're great at that! But if your asking us to provide patentable information that realizes in fact your fantastic idea - that's not really what we do. $\endgroup$– JBHCommented Jun 11, 2023 at 18:26
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1$\begingroup$ On top of what is stated above, you keep asking around "remotely controlled organism". Even the tastiest chop become boring after having it too many times. $\endgroup$– L.Dutch ♦Commented Jun 11, 2023 at 19:01
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$\begingroup$ Please give a little more insight on what kind of 'changing of DNA' you are looking for - switching between two predefined (even rather different) modes (e.g. anaerobic vs aerobic, persist vs attack) ? Or would you like your bacteria to be reprogrammable by downloading new genes? Switching is doable and done, Downloading is ... way more advanced $\endgroup$– bukwyrmCommented Jun 13, 2023 at 17:39
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2 Answers
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This is completely impractical. If you've been inspired by the conspiracy theories about vaccines and 5G, please note that those theories are obvious nonsense to anyone with a little knowledge of both radio and biology.
The basic problems include:
Your receiver and its antenna are too small. At about 2 micrometres, they could pick up radio waves of about 8 micrometres wavelength. Unfortunately, that wavelength is in the infrared part of the spectrum, which means that your bacteria will be unable to receive signals through any significant depth of water, or thickness of animal or plant tissues.
Controlling a bacterium's movement requires having some idea of its orientation. Brownian motion ensures that will be random and rapidly changing.
Changing DNA on the fly depends on if you want to make a specific pre-planned change, or redesign the DNA at will. The pre-planned change could be done via a predesigned enzyme, if you had a way to signal the bacterium to release it. But you don't, or at least, not via radio. Making arbitrary changes requires enough computing power and molecular manipulation to manufacture custom enzymes within the bacterium. You don't have the space or energy supply for that within anything bacteria-sized.
answered Jun 11, 2023 at 19:15
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$\begingroup$ the problem of radiowaves being too long for a single bacterium could be resolved by having the bacteria form a longer chain (shortest wave that can charitably be described as 'radio' is 1mm, so lambda/4 would only require 250 bacteria in a row) - you'd still have to fight the absurdly high dielectric losses at those frequencies, so the bacteria would need to be on the surface (on some exposed wet part of the body - eyes?) and the sender would radiate crazy amounts of energy to make this viable over more than a few cm... . $\endgroup$– bukwyrmCommented Jun 13, 2023 at 17:34
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Bacteria communicate via chemical signals. If you include in the same environment special bacteria and capsules that release chemical signals you can control those bacteria.
Trouble is what small capsule could receive a radio wave? You could exploit the fact that microwaves cause some molecules to flip. Some capsules could have an envelope containing molecules that flip on a microwave signal paired with other molecules that don't flip. The envelope could break up releasing the chemical signal.
