Revealing extracellular electron transfer mediated parasitism: energetic considerations.

ABSTRACT: Extracellular electron transfer (EET) is a mechanism that allows energetic coupling between two microorganisms or between a microorganism and an electrode surface. EET is either supported by direct physical contacts or mediated by electron shuttles. So far, studies dealing with interspecies EET (so-called IET) have mainly focused on possible syntrophic interactions between microorganisms favoured by this mechanism. In this article, the case of fermentative bacteria receiving extracellular electrons while fermenting a substrate is considered. A thermodynamical analysis based on metabolic energy balances was applied to re-investigate experimental data from the literature. Results suggest that the observations of a decrease of cell biomass yields of fermentative electron-accepting species, as

SUBMITTER: Moscoviz R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5552874 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature