Public release date: 19-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Jim Sliwa jsliwa@asmusa.org 202-942-9297 American Society for Microbiology

Researchers have engineered a strain of electricity-producing bacteria that can grow using hydrogen gas as its sole electron donor and carbon dioxide as its sole source of carbon. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst report their findings at the 113th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.

"This represents the first result of current production solely on hydrogen," says Amit Kumar, a researcher on the study who, along with his co-authors are part of the Lovley Lab Group at the university.

Under the leadership of Derek Lovley the lab group has been studying Geobacter bacteria since Lovley first isolated Geobacter metallireducens in sand sediment from the Potomac River in 1987. Geobacter species are of interest because of their bioremediation, bioenergy potential, novel electron transfer capabilities, the ability to transfer electrons outside the cell and transport these electrons over long distances via conductive filaments known as microbial nanowires.

Kumar and his colleagues studied a relative of G. metallireducens called Geobacter sulfurreducens, which has the ability to produce electricity by reducing organic carbon compounds with a graphite electrode like iron oxide or gold to serve as the sole electron acceptor. They genetically engineered a strain of the bacteria that did not need organic carbon to grow in a microbial fuel cell.

"The adapted strain readily produced electrical current in microbial fuel cells with hydrogen gas as the sole electron donor and no organic carbon source," says Kumar, who notes that when the hydrogen supply to the microbial fuel cell was intermittently stopped electrical current dropped significantly and cells attached to the electrodes did not generate any significant current.

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This research was supported by funding by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Office of Naval Research.

This research was presented as part of the 2013 General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology held May 18-21, 2013 in Denver, Colorado. A full press kit for the meeting, including tipsheets and additional press releases, can be found online at http://bit.ly/asm2013pk.

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Bacteria use hydrogen, carbon dioxide to produce electricity

Public release date: 19-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Jim Sliwa jsliwa@asmusa.org 202-942-9297 American Society for Microbiology

Scientists at the University of California, Davis have engineered a strain of photosynthetic cyanobacteria to grow without the need for light. They report their findings today at the 113th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.

"In this work, we used synthetic biology approaches to probe and rewire photoautotrophic (exclusively relying on carbon dioxide and light energy for growth) cyanobacterial metabolism for the ability to grow without light energy," says Jordan McEwen, the lead researcher on the study. He is part of Shota Atsumi's lab at the university, a research group focused on developing synthetic organisms capable of converting carbon dioxide directly to biofuels.

The cyanobacterium strain Synechococcus elongatus strain PCC 7942 has been well characterized as a model photoautotroph. Previous work by Atsumi's lab has engineered this organism to recycle carbon dioxide into a variety of biofuels and valuable chemicals in the presence of light. Any cost-effective, cyanobacterial biofuel production scheme would use natural lighting conditions, limiting how much biofuel could be produced in a 24-hour period.

"To overcome this constraint, we installed foreign genes into S. elongatus to allow this cyanobacterium to grow and generate biofuels in diurnal (light or dark) conditions," says McEwen. "With recent, increased focus on cyanobacteria-based industrial applications, this advancement is desirable for more efficient, economical and controllable bioproduction systems."

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This work was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (1132442).

This research was presented as part of the 2013 General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology held May 18-21, 2013 in Denver, Colorado. A full press kit for the meeting, including tipsheets and additional press releases, can be found online at http://bit.ly/asm2013pk. The American Society for Microbiology is the largest single life science society, composed of over 39,000 scientists and health professionals. ASM's mission is to advance the microbiological sciences as a vehicle for understanding life processes and to apply and communicate this knowledge for the improvement of health and environmental and economic well-being worldwide.

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Engineered microbes grow in the dark

The National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg is working with a sample of the new coronavirus thats causing clusters of infections abroad but can't share the material with other researchers across the country despite the public health urgency.

It was a Dutch lab that sent a Saudi sample of the virus to Winnipeg, where scientists are looking for better ways to diagnose and treat the infection. So far, 41 confirmed cases and 20 deaths have been recorded.

But before they could start, officials had to sign a material transfer agreement, a contract that outlines the terms and conditions for using the coronavirus sample.

The Dutch "had pretty tight restrictions around how it could be used," Frank Plummer, scientific director of the National Microbiology Laboratory, said in an interview. "So there was a lot of negotiation and a lot of lawyers involved both with us and the Americans and others around the world, which slowed things down quite a bit."

Such agreements exist for different reasons sometimes because countries want to make sure a dangerous bug won't fall into the wrong hands, sometimes because they want to exert their rights if a vaccine or treatment is developed. But the agreements also impede the research process, say scientists.

"We can't distribute [the virus] any further, which is a problem, because a lot of people would like to be working on this and can't," Plummer said.

In contrast, Plummer said China simply gave away samples of the H7N9 bird flu virus, as did Mexico with H1N1 swine flu in 2009.

The researcher who first spotted the coronavirus in 2012 lost his job for sending it out of Saudi Arabia.

Ali Mohamed Zaki discovered the deadly pathogen last June at a microbiology lab at the Dr. Soliman Fakeeh Hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Zaki had been investigating the case of a 60-year-old man with a lung infection who died 18 days after symptoms started. When he couldn't identify the virus, he sent it to Ron Fouchier, a Dutch researcher who was able to sequence it. It was a coronavirus never before seen in humans.

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Saudi coronavirus work stymied at Canadian lab

Medical Microbiology 2 Lab : part 1
Blood cultures/ Genital cultures.

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