http://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/scientists-reveal-how-microbe-eats-electricity
"Some microbes, simple as they may be, have an ability to gather energy from extreme sources like sulfur, formic acid, minerals, and... electricity? Yes, electricity. A team led by Peter Girguis from Harvard has discovered how a certain bacteria gets its energetic needs from electrons pulled from the environment. The results of this study were published in Nature Communications.
Rhodopseudomonas palustris are gram-negative bacteria that has remarkable dexterity in obtaining energy and is able to take cues from the environment to employ photoautotropic, photoheterotrophic, chemoautotrophic, or chemoheterotrophic metabolism. This flexibility has baffled microbiologists for some time. Girguisâs team focused on the phototrophic aspects of its metabolism in order to begin teasing out some answers.
Electrons are essentially the energy currency for most forms of life and they are exchanged through oxidation-reduction reactions. R. palustris TIE-1 is somewhat different in that it is able to take electrons from materials in the solid phase, while most others require electron donors and acceptors to be in solution. One of these metabolic mechanisms allows the bacteria to obtain energy through extracellular electron transfer, though the cellular processes that accomplish this have been a mystery until now.
- See more at: http://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/scientists-reveal-how-microbe-eats-electricity#sthash.gk2rwkmT.dpuf
Read more at http://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/scientists-reveal-how-microbe-eats-electricity#adQv4B3pHeFEIMRH.99"
No son geniales las bacterias?
😊
