Revolutionizing Clean Energy? Yale Scientists Discover How Bacteria “Breathe” Minerals

Yale researchers uncovered the molecular machinery behind nanowire assembly in microbes, enabling advances in electricity production, pollution mitigation, and methane reduction.

Almost all living organisms breathe oxygen to remove excess electrons generated during the conversion of nutrients into energy.

However, many microbes that play a crucial role in mitigating pollution and climate change lack access to oxygen. Instead, these bacteria—found buried underground or deep beneath oceans—have evolved a unique method of expelling electrons. They “breathe” minerals in the soil using tiny protein filaments known as nanowires.

Unveiling the Machinery Behind Nanowires

In previous research, a team led by Nikhil Malvankar, Associate Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale’s Microbial Sciences Institute, showed that nanowires are made up of a chain of heme molecules, just like hemoglobin in our blood, thrust into the environment to move electrons.

To leverage the power of these microbes, however, scientists need to know how those nanowires are assembled.

The Yale team led by Cong Shen has now discovered the machinery that assembles the nanowires, making practical applications possible.

Of the 111 heme proteins, only three are known to polymerize to become nanowires. Not only did the team identify the surrounding machinery that makes it possible for these proteins to become nanowires, but they also demonstrated that changing some of the machinery’s components can accelerate nanowire reproduction and bacterial growth.

This is an important next step in engineering bacteria to efficiently produce electricity, clean pollutants from water, and lower atmospheric methane levels.

Reference: “A widespread and ancient bacterial machinery assembles cytochrome OmcS nanowires essential for extracellular electron transfer” by Cong Shen, Aldo I. Salazar-Morales, Wonhyeuk Jung, Joey Erwin, Yangqi Gu, Anthony Coelho, Kallol Gupta, Sibel Ebru Yalcin, Fadel A. Samatey and Nikhil S. Malvankar, 15 January 2025, Cell Chemical Biology.
DOI: 10.1016/j.chembiol.2024.12.013

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