Microbes on a chip: How microfluidics can help us better understand and engineer electroactive microbes

Abstract

Microbes on a chip: How microfluidics can help us better understand and engineer electroactive microbes EEU is a relatively newly discovered process in microbiology. The Bose research group is bringing an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the molecular mechanisms behind EEU and how it can be engineered to provide potential solutions to the climate crisis. These solutions come from the capacity of some EEU-capable microbes to use chemical energy (chemoautotrophs) or light energy (photoautotrophs) in a process like photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) into biomass. EEU-capable chemoautotrophs and photoautotrophs are quite common in nature and could not only be used to remove CO2 from the environment but also to concurrently produce bioplastics or biofuels through microbial electrosynthesis.