Abstract
Bioelectrochemical systems and synthetic biology: more power, more products.
Highlights
The natural physiological activity of electroactive bacteria, those capable of extracellular electron transfer (EET), has been studied intensely over the past two decades in order to improve efficiency and productivity of Microbial electrochemical technologies (METs)
Our growing knowledge of the principles of EET is poised to intersect with the nascent field of synthetic biology to bring about the generation of MET for power and energy, microbial electrosynthesis and microbial bioelectronics
Two examples are given below: (i) enhanced power output from microbial fuel cells and (ii) the potential for microbial electrosynthesis to be a viable approach for fuels or molecules production
Summary
Following the realization that microorganisms drive electricity production at the anode electrode, it was determined that electrons could run in reverse and provide reducing equivalents to drive reduction reactions. This was recently demonstrated by a team of researchers at the MIT/Broad Institute as part of a DARPA pressure test for chemical synthesis to rapidly meet the needs of various sectors of the U.S and global economy and defence sector (Casini et al, 2018) Renewable energy, such as solar, can be used to drive water-splitting reactions to provide electrons to the microbial catalyst (Liu et al, 2018a,2018b) further reducing operating costs. Another MET that could be impacted by synthetic biology tools for molecule production is known as electrofermentation – the guided fermentation of waste or traditional feedstock using an electrode (Flynn et al, 2010; Christodoulou and Velasquez-Orta, 2016). METs can translate the language of microbes into our own
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