A broad range of themes in Microbial Biotechnology

Abstract

In the November issue of Microbial Biotechnology a series of relevant articles were published regarding energy generation, thermostable enzymes, influence of transgenic plants on microbes that live in the rhizosphere of plants, degradation of hormones, identification of pathogens, and the use of phage to control bacterial populations. This abundant selection of articles reflects that Microbial Biotechnology is attracting interest from a wide range of fields with the aim of placing science within the prospect of future industrial developments. One of the themes that has attracted a good number of articles in 2008 has been energy generation. The November issue brought three relevant articles. One of them dealt with microbial fuel cells (MFCs), which are based on the use of microorganisms as biocatalysts to convert chemical energy contained in electron donors to electrical energy. Microbial fuel cells are considered to have potential application in the domains of power supply, biological oxygen demand sensors and especially in sustainable wastewater treatment. However, a number of limitations appear in the system and one of the approaches to overcome a number of these limitations was described by Pham and colleagues (2008) in the previous issue of Microbial Biotechnology. These authors show that the application of high shear rates enriched an anodophilic microbial consortium in MFC that resulted in higher performance. Enrichment at a shear rate of about 120 s