Ever wonder what microorganisms do on a Saturday night? In professor Derek Lovley's lab at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, doctoral candidate Zarath Summers and her colleagues made a point to find out. In the process, Summers discovered a new cooperative behavior in bacteria.
"Interspecies electron transfer" entails one microorganism forming a direct electrical connection to another.
Scientists have known since the 1960s that microorganisms can indirectly exchange electrons through a process called hydrogen transfer, in which one microbe produces hydrogen and then another microbe consumes it. But this discovery takes hydrogen transfer and goes a step further. Rather than a baton pass of sorts, it is two species directly plugging into each other.
The microbes Summers and her colleagues are studying — Geobacter — are of particular interest because of their role in environmental restoration. For example, the organisms can destroy petroleum contaminants and remove radioactive metal from polluted groundwater.
"Interspecies electron transfer" entails one microorganism forming a direct electrical connection to another.
Scientists have known since the 1960s that microorganisms can indirectly exchange electrons through a process called hydrogen transfer, in which one microbe produces hydrogen and then another microbe consumes it. But this discovery takes hydrogen transfer and goes a step further. Rather than a baton pass of sorts, it is two species directly plugging into each other.
The microbes Summers and her colleagues are studying — Geobacter — are of particular interest because of their role in environmental restoration. For example, the organisms can destroy petroleum contaminants and remove radioactive metal from polluted groundwater.
