Monday, 11 February 2008

bacteriology - Are there any bacteria that can receive ultrasound signals?

I'm going to post a quick answer here, really a thought piece.



Usually to detect a sound wave you need a sounding board about the wavelength of the sound.



Bacteria are on the order of a few microns in length.



Ultrasound frequencies range from 2 to 200 MHz (and up I assume).



To have a wavelength on the order of 3 microns, a 100 MHz wave would be needed.



So only on the very high end of the range. If bacteria make sound though, they probably are on this frequency range.



I wonder if this has been looked at? Not sure it has. While in biology you never say never - if a bacterium really needs to pick up a wave it might have a clever adaptation to do so, but in the 100MHz + frequency range seems more likely.

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