Rotaru Lab

University of Southern Denmark

By - Amelia Rotaru

Paola’s second biocorrosion paper got published

News with a slight delay.

Our new article “A Win–Loss Interaction on Fe0 Between Methanogens and Acetogens From a Climate Lake” dealing with biocorrosion was published this May in Frontiers in Microbiology.

In this work:

  • We studied how microbial communities from climate lake sediments promote microbial-influenced Fe0 corrosion when no other electron donor and acceptors are available.
  • Observed that Clostridia and Methanobacterium were the only groups detected after 11 subsequent transfers solely with zero valent iron (Fe0) as the electron donor.
  • Methanobacterium were ineffective corroders in the absence of the acetogens, although they do not use acetate for methanogenesis. These results suggested that acetogens promote hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis in other ways.
  • Observed that cell exudates (spent media filtrate extracted during the acetogenesis phase) promoted H2-evolution from Fe0, partially due to thermolabile enzymes and partially due to non-thermolabile constituents released by cells.
  • Clostridial [FeFe] hydrogenases were abundant in the metagenome of this corrosive community and may play a role in promoting hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis.