A friend sent me an article regarding a solar cell made from spinach. It seems like a good way to make use of all of that contaminated spinach that had e-coli. Yet, there actually is more to it than that. Researchers at MIT, led by Marc Baldo, created a solar cell that uses photosynthetic proteins to convert light into electricity. They harvested photosynthetic proteins from the spinach and the bacterium Rhodobacter Sphaeroides and placed the proteins onto glass. The big challenge was to keep the isolated proteins working while on a solid surface. The proteins luckily kept their function when placed in a synthetic membrane. I couldn't make sense of some of the technical language, but I think it boils down to placing a layer of the membrane material and adding a semiconductor, an electrode and finally, shining some light on the combination to create a current. One drawback is that this type of solar cell is less efficient than conventional ones. On the plus side, a protein-based solar cell could be self-repairing.

I thought this story was very exciting because it shows how there are organic ways to produce solar cells, which actually may make the whole process more earth-friendly than it already is. Since toxic chemicals are used to make traditional solar panels, this may be an alternative to that. Maybe all of that discarded bagged spinach should have been saved for this purpose.