Promoting efficiency of microbial extracellular electron transfer by synthetic biology.
- Author:
Feng LI
1
;
Hao SONG
1
Author Information
- Publication Type:Journal Article
- Keywords: electroactive bacteria; microbial electrocatalysis; microbial electrosynthesis; microbial fuel cells; synthetic biology
- From: Chinese Journal of Biotechnology 2017;33(3):516-534
- CountryChina
- Language:Chinese
- Abstract: Electroactive bacteria, including electrigenic bacteria (exoelectrogens) and electroautotrophic bacteria, implement microbial bioelectrocatalysis processes via bi-directional exchange of electrons and energy with environments, enabling a wide array of applications in environmental and energy fields, including microbial fuel cells (MFC), microbial electrolysis cells (MEC), microbial electrosynthesis (MES) to produce electricity and bulk fine chemicals. However, the low efficiency in the extracellular electron transfer (EET) of exoelectrogens and electrotrophic microbes limited their industrial applications. Here, we reviewed synthetic biology approaches to engineer electroactive microorganisms to break the bottleneck of their EET pathways, to achieve higher efficiency of EET of a number of electroactive microorganisms. Such efforts will lead to a breakthrough in the applications of these electroactive microorganisms and microbial electrocatalysis systems.
