Category: News

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.

Ascending Investigator grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation.

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It is an honor to have received a prestigious Novo Ascending Investigator grant in biotechnology synthesis and production. The Ascending program is aimed at supporting ambitious and original research projects and the continued development of top researchers in the Nordic region.

This grant gives me the opportunity to continue my research on determining how electroactive methanogens utilize extracellular electron donors.

Several PhD and postdoc positions will be announced soon, and hiring will happen during 2021-2022. If interested in this type of research, please contact me via email.

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Here is a popular and public abstract of the application:

“We face three biotechnology challenges: producing chemicals sustainably, capturing carbon dioxide, and storing renewable energy. This proposal deals with the fundamental understanding of a technology where all three challenges are addressed concomitantly. My group recently discovered that certain microorganisms used in biotechnology (methanogens called Methanosarcinales) directly capture renewable energy and carbon dioxide, converting these into useful chemicals, which can be stored. Nevertheless, we do not understand how these microorganisms capture electrical energy directly, a mechanism which we will explore in this proposal. We will then evaluate whether we can use this method of direct energy capture inherently or whether we can engineer it to create a solution to producing chemicals sustainably, capturing carbon dioxide, and storing renewable energy.”

Link to our preprint

Our research revealed a new type of microbial interaction on Fe0 between methanogens (positively affected) and acetogens (negatively affected). Methanogens that were otherwise ineffective at metabolizing Fe0-electrons, become effective when co-existing with acetogens. We hypothesize methanogens do so by taking advantage of H2-evolving enzymes released by methanogens. We note the necessity to study the effects of associations between physiological groups on Fe0-corrosion, and not solely the effects of cultured isolates.