Derek Lovley

Surprise 70th BD notif from scholargps.com for Career Contributions Microbial Ecology: #1 Quality; #2 Rank Microorganism: #3 Quality; #2 Rank Microbiology: #3 Quality; #4 Rank Life Sciences: #26 Quality; #50 Rank All Fields: #96 Quality; #239 Rank @UMassAmherst @UMass

Electroactive Microbes Short-Circuit the Passive Film to Corrode Stainless Steel | Research spj.science.org/doi/10.34133/r… Microbial corrosion has an enormous economic impact. Learn how electroactive microbes can even extract electrons from “corrosion-resistant” stainless steel.

Commentary: Electron transport across the cell envelope via multiheme c-type cytochromes in Geobacter sulfurreducens frontiersin.org/journals/chemi… Calling out the need to consider all the available data when reviewing extracellular electron transfer mechanisms @ISMETsociety

Genetic and Transcriptomic Analysis of Microbial Electro-Extraction for Releasing Metals from Spent Lithium-Ion Batteries authors.elsevier.com/a/1lxGf3QUFZUN… Introducing Microbial Electro-Extraction (MEE): a sustainable electromicrobiological strategy 4 recycling spent lithium-ion batteries

Constructing artificial neurons with functional parameters comprehensively matching biological values nature.com/articles/s4146… Artificial neurons fabricated with microbially produced protein nanowires closely emulate biological neurons @UMassAmherst

Check out the Dorval Lab's latest publication - 'M13 bacteriophage as a versatile platform for the creation of new materials via genetic engineering' in the Canadian Journal of Microbiology! Congratulations to Julia, Reefah, Beyza, and Daniel for their review on phage materials!

Desulfovibrio ferrophilus corrosion mechanisms revealed! authors.elsevier.com/a/1lSkc9pi-hrvp Gene deletion study demonstrates the importance of H2 as an electron shuttle, rather than direct electron uptake, overturning a 20-year misconception in the field of microbial corrosion. #Corrosion

Long-range electron transport in self-assembled fibrils of peptides rich in aromatic residues pubs.rsc.org/en/content/art… @_IamRamesh_ Excellent overview of this topic. #electrobiomaterials

Sensing devices fabricated with Escherichia coli expressing genetically tunable nanowires incorporated into a water-stable polymer authors.elsevier.com/a/1knpe3PVtq0O… Fabricating wearable sensors by mixing whole cells & their attached pilin-based nanowires into flexible polymer composite.

The worldwide economic cost of microbial corrosion is likely to exceed a trillion dollars a year. A new #mLife study by @microbeelectric et al. shows that Desulfovibrio vulgaris promotes corrosion by producing sulfide during sulfate reduction. doi.org/10.1002/mlf2.1…

Microbial nanowires for sustainable electronics Open access: rdcu.be/dMOU1 Taking electromicrobiology ‘down to the wire’ •Types of microbial nanowires •The E. coli chassis for scale-up •Genetic tailoring for novel functions •Novel electronics-sensors, electricity from air, neuromorphic memory •Advantages over traditional nanowires •Future opportunities @UMassAmherst @UMassIALS @ISMETsociety @CEMAarhus @naturevbioeng

Microbial nanowires can be integrated in electronic devices for sensing, electricity generation and neuromorphic memory! In their Review, Derek Lovley et al discuss their functional re-engineering for sustainable electronics @microbeelectric go.nature.com/4eMv6pn

Iron Corrosion is a Gas! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10… • Desulfovibrio vulgaris is incapable of direct metal-to-microbe electron transfer even with supplementary energy & ferrous sulfide • H2 removal is not necessary for the enhanced corrosion observed in the presence of microbes

Incorporating Microbial Pilin-Based Nanowires into a Water-Stable Electronic Polymer Composite biorxiv.org/content/10.110… Precision genetic tailoring of microbial nanowires incorporated into polymer composite for multiple functions, including highly sensitive electronic sensing of dissolved analytes.

Chloride Enhances Corrosion Associated with Sulfate-Reducing Bacteria authors.elsevier.com/c/1j303,Fwi-Rhq No genes, no gels, no high-end analytics, just basic culturing to provide the simple explanation for what was erroneously considered a paradigm shift in microbial corrosion mechanisms.

Taking Corrosion Mechanisms Claims with a Grain of Salt: “Chloride Enhances Corrosion Associated with Sulfate-Reducing Bacteria” sciencedirect.com/science/articl… For two decades rapid corrosion by some Desulfovibrio was attributed to a radically new mechanism of corrosion. Actually, the simpler explanation is that differences in chloride concentrations in the different cultures were responsible for the corrosion rate differences.

Happy to see this commentary. Other issues: stoichiometry for methane consumption and Fe(III) reduction is not stoichiometric and there is orders of magnitude too little humic acid to account for methane consumed. For commentary on another EET paper by this same group see: academic.oup.com/ismej/article/…

🦠🔋A new #mLife work by @microbeelectric et al. found that syntrophic methanogens and acetogens that perform electroactive corrosion lack important outer surface c-type cytochromes previously identified in other electroactive microbes. @wileymicrobio doi.org/10.1002/mlf2.1…

An Electromicrobiology Must Read "To be or Not to be a Cytochrome: Electrical Characterizations are Inconsistent with Geobacter Cytochrome 'Nanowires'" Matthew J. Guberman-Pfeffer frontiersin.org/journals/micro… Think you understand cytochrome nanowires? Some takeaways: “The structural discrepancies relative to CryoEM, on top of the physiological irrelevance or physical implausibility of electrical characterizations for a multi-heme architecture beg of the filaments the title question: To be or not to be a cytochrome?” “Cytochrome filaments are proposed to be physiologically relevant. Meanwhile, the reported 102–105-fold larger conductivities, the 107- fold variation in conductivity with PilA-N aromatic density, the hallmarks of metallic-like charge propagation, voltage, temperature, and pH dependences, and the spectroscopically-deduced secondary structure compositions are all irreconcilable with the known cytochrome filaments.” “failing to find the structural and electrical characterizations consistent with cytochromes lends circumstantial support to the e-pilus hypothesis.” “cytochromes must be capable of a 107-fold variation in conductivity that coincidentally correlates with the number of aromatic residues in the Geobacter pilus” “Current electrical characterizations reflect abiological artifacts” “the measured currents are 102–105-fold larger than the computed and biologically reasonable maximum redox current of 0.14 pA/filament… a physiologically relevant succession of redox reactions (multi-step hopping) cannot even come close to account for the reported conductivities.” “Cytochromes cannot logically have properties inconsistent with cytochromes” “Electrical measurements have not been performed on known cytochrome filament structures”

Wow! The author provides key insights into ignored, misinterpreted, and suppressed data in the publication of high impact papers interpreting cytochrome nanowire function. Read along with journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mb… clearly, much more to do to sort out cytochrome filament function

Lack of physiological evidence for cytochrome filaments functioning as conduits for extracellular electron transfer journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mb… Functional genetic studies demonstrate requirement for e-pili, but not cytochrome nanowires for #Geobacter long-range EET. Highlights: • The primary functional evidence for cytochrome filaments enabling long-range EET is the 2005 finding that deleting the gene for G. sulfurreducens gene for OmcS prevented Fe(III) oxide reduction. (Read paper for the explanation of the already existing evidence that OmcZ and OmcE filaments are not essential for long-range EET) • We reexamined the physiology of the same OmcS-deficient strain from that original 2005 report. It reduces Fe(III) oxide as well as the wild-type, as does a triple mutant in which the genes for the other known filament-forming cytochromes (OmcZ and OmcE) were also deleted. • The triple cytochrome mutant that reduced Fe(III) oxide displayed e-pili with the same 3 nm diameter morphology and conductance as those produced by E. coli heterologously expressing the G. sulfurreducens PilA pilin gene. • Fe(III) oxide reduction was inhibited when the pilin gene in cytochrome-deficient mutants was modified to yield poorly conductive 3 nm diameter filaments. • These results are consistent with the concept that e-pili are required for G. sulfurreducens long-range extracellular electron transfer. In contrast, rigorous physiolog­ical functional evidence is lacking for cytochrome filaments serving as conduits for long-range electron transport. • The energy that G. sulfurreducens invests in producing cytochrome filaments suggests that they provide a physiological benefit. However, the low abundance of cytochrome filaments compared to e-pili (journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.11…) makes functional analysis difficult. • Bottom up approaches to studying the function of cytochrome filaments and other G. sulfurreducens outer surface proteins (nature.com/articles/s4157…) such as the recently described expression of OmcS in Shewanella (…iencejournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bi…) may be helpful for elucidating cytochrome filament function. • On the practical side- While some folks claim that the pilin-based nanowires cannot exist we are genetically tailoring the properties of e-pili expressed in E. coli for specific electronic functions. sciencedirect.com/science/articl… More to come on this topic soon!