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UNKILLABLE BACTERIA. "People are exposed to L-form bacteria in many places. Because they cannot be killed by pasteurization or chlorination, L-form bacteria can be found in milk, food, and water. They can be transmitted via sperm, intimate contact, and can be passed from mother to child during childbirth." http://mpkb.org/home/pathogenesis/microbiota/lforms View in LinkedIn

DIVISION ADAPTION. "Remarkably, despite the limited mutational changes required, the new L-form cells completely abandon the normally essential cell division machinery used by virtually all extant bacterial cells, and proliferate instead by a mechanism of membrane tubulation or blebbing." https://lnkd.in/d_F2hqt View in LinkedIn

TROJAN HORSE STRATEGY. "Classical forms of most bacterial species can be found in the bloodstream. However L-form bacteria have figured out how to successfully infect and live inside the very cells of the immune system whose role is to kill bacteria. Once inside these cells, they can no longer be detected by the immune system and are able to persist in the body over long periods of time." http://mpkb.org/home/pathogenesis/microbiota/lforms View in LinkedIn

SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL. "Shrinking today’s robotic pebbles and blocks to the submillimeter scale presents an enormous technical challenge, but it’s not unreasonable to imagine that advances in microelectromechanical systems might allow for such miniaturization a few decades from now." https://lnkd.in/dzmMmjE View in LinkedIn

L-FORMS AND ORIGIN OF LIFE. "Invention of the cell wall may have underpinned the explosion of bacterial life on the Earth. Later innovations in cell envelope structure, particularly the emergence of the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria, possibly in an early endospore former, seem to have spurned further major evolutionary radiations." https://lnkd.in/d_F2hqt View in LinkedIn

SHAPE MEMORY POLYMERS. "The use of shape memory polymers is demonstrated for deformable, programmable, and shape-memorizing micro-optical devices. A semi-crystalline shape memory elastomer, crosslinked poly(ethylene-co-vinyl acetate), is used to prepare various micro-optic components, ranging from microlens and microprism arrays to diffraction gratings and holograms." https://lnkd.in/d3Z-dd7 View in LinkedIn

IATROGENIC INDUCTION. "One of the chief suspects for creating L-form bacteria in vivo is the use of antibiotics including the penicillins and the cephalosporins - and this is the method used to create L-forms in the laboratory." And given the over-use of antibiotics, they are likely everywhere. https://lnkd.in/dTCkxDw View in LinkedIn

ROBOTIC SAND. "Imagine that you have a big box of sand in which you bury a tiny model of a footstool. A few seconds later, you reach into the box and pull out a full-size footstool: The sand has assembled itself into a large-scale replica of the model." And the whole thing could be recycled. https://lnkd.in/dm2MHH5 View in LinkedIn

ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANT. "Treatment with penicillin does not merely select for L-forms (which are penicillin resistant) but actually induces L-form growth." Given that they are microscopically invisible, and that they are induced by antibiotics, this makes their medical story very interesting. http://mpkb.org/home/pathogenesis/microbiota/lforms View in LinkedIn

BIG SMALL GOAL. "Shrinking the cubes remains the biggest challenge. Gilpin believes that they could eventually achieve dimensions of about 1 millimiter, in effect transforming their smart pebbles into smart sand, but that will take time." https://lnkd.in/dBu7JMS View in LinkedIn