What is it about?
This study documents protonic conductivity across cable bacteria. The discovery of protonic conductivity in cable bacteria provides a putative scaffold through which protons may be transported on the surface of bacteria through the sediment, or perhaps to other organisms. However, despite these hypotheses, the evolutionary benefit of this phenomenon, its role in environmental settings, and its role in microbial interaction remains unknown.
Featured Image
Photo by JJ Ying on Unsplash
Why is it important?
The observation of protonic conductivity in cable bacteria, coupled with the development of a transfer printing technique that enables microorganisms to be stamped with protodes, opens up the possibility to assess the presence of protonic conductivity across the surface of other microorganisms and materials, and potentially build bioprotonic devices.
Perspectives
Blue Skies ides: The foundations laid in this study open up the possibility for building biotic/abiotic interfaces that enables the nuanced multidirectional communication between humans and individual cells using subatomic particles that are activated using computer terminals. Since living cells tend to prefer communicating/ signaling using protons and ions rather than electrons, the discovery of protonically conductive channels enables us to think more generally about building bio-protonic rather than bio-electronic devices. The potential applications of this discovery include initiating cellular pathways within eukaryotic cells to avoid certain disease states or within microbial cells to synthesize high value compounds or fuels. Furthermore, with further study, the potential roles that protonic conductivity plays in environmental settings can shed new light on microbial interactions in root systems, sediment, and biofilms, to name a few.
Bradley Lusk
Science The Earth
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Hydrated cable bacteria exhibit protonic conductivity over long distances, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, January 2025, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2416008122.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
