Enhancement of bioelectricity generation by manipulation of the electron shuttles synthesis pathway in microbial fuel cells

Abstract

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are promising for generating bioenergy and treating organic waste simultaneously. However, low extracellular electron transfer (EET) efficiency between electrogens and anodes remains one of the major bottlenecks in practical applications of MFCs. In this paper, pyocyanin (PYO) synthesis pathway was manipulated to improve the EET efficiency in Pseudomonas aeruginosa-inoculated MFCs. By overexpression of phzM (methyltransferase encoding gene), the maximum power density of P. aeruginosa-phzM-inoculated MFC was enhanced to 166.68 μW/cm(2), which was four folds of the original strain. In addition, the phzM overexpression strain exhibited an increase of 1.6 folds in PYO production and about a onefold decrease in the total internal resistance than the original strain, which should underlie the enhancement of the EET efficiency and the electricity power output (EPT). On the basis of these results, the manipulation of electron shuttles synthesis pathways could be an efficient approach to improve the EPT of MFCs.