Metabolic spatial variability in electrode-respiring Geobacter sulfurreducens biofilms
Understanding electron transport through conductive microbial biofilms is important, not only for understanding the conversion of organic compounds to electricity in microbial fuel cells, but also for other bioenergy strategies, such as methane production, and for a number of environmental phenomena. There has been much speculation and controversy on this topic, but few definitive answers, caused in large part by a lack of appropriate tools for studying metabolism within biofilms.
Scientists in US have performed an interesting study in which novel tools and approaches have led to a new understanding of metabolism in conductive biofilms. By performing depth-profile measurements inside Geobacter sulfurreducens biofilms, generated using an electrochemicalnuclear magnetic resonance microimaging biofilm reactor, they could reveal metabolic inactivity near the base of the biofilm due to electron donor limitations.
The methods described in this paper are likely to have wide application to the study of other biofilm processes.
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