Abstract
Recently, long filamentous "cable bacteria" have been discovered, which are capable of mediating large electrical currents over centimetre-scale distances. This finding extends the known length scale of microbial electron transmission by three orders of magnitude, and implies that biological evolution has somehow generated a highly conductive, organic structure. This is remarkable as biological materials are known to be poorly conductive. If the conductive structures inside cable bacteria could somehow be exploited in an engineered way, this could pave the way for entirely new materials and applications in bio-electronics. To better grasp the wide reaching implications, we need to better understand the phenomenon of microbial long-distance electron transport. Yet presently, it remains a conundrum how electrons are transported through cable bacteria. Recently data demonstrate that the cell envelope of cable bacteria contains highly conductive fibre structures. The prime objective of this project is to resolve the protein composition of these conductive fibre structures. To this end, I will use an approach that combines genomics and proteomics. I aim to find out what makes the proteins in the fibre structures conductive, where they evolutionary come from, and how they function. If we can determine the proteins involved in long-distance electron transport, we can learn more about how this extraordinary mechanism works.
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