Science Daily September 12, 2018
A team of researchers in the US (UC Berkley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) discovered that a common diarrhea-causing bacterium, Listeria monocytogenes, produces electricity using an entirely different technique from known electrogenic bacteria, and that hundreds of other bacterial species use this same process. They showed that the food-borne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes uses a distinctive flavin-based EET mechanism to deliver electrons to iron or an electrode. The discovery will be good news for those currently trying to create living batteries from microbes. Such “green” bioenergetic technologies could, for example, generate electricity from bacteria in waste treatment plants…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Listeria bacteria transport electrons through their cell wall into the environment as tiny currents, assisted by ubiquitous flavin molecules (yellow dots). Credit: Amy Cao graphic. Copyright UC Berkeley