A synthetic microbial consortium of Shewanella and Bacillus for enhanced generation of bioelectricity.
In this study, a synthetic microbial consortium containing exoelectrogen Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 and riboflavin-producing strain, Bacillus subtilis RH33, was rationally designed and successfully constructed, enabling a stable, multiple cycles of microbial fuel cells (MFCs) operation for more than 500 h. The maximum power density of MFCs with this synthetic microbial consortium was 277.4 mW/m2, which was 4.9 times of that with MR-1 (56.9 mW/m2) and 40.2 times of RH33 (6.9 mW/m2), separately. At the same time, the Coulombic efficiency of the synthetic microbial consortium (5.6%) was higher than MR-1 (4.1%) and RH33 (2.3%). Regardless the high concentration of riboflavin produced by RH33, the power density of RH33 was rather low. The low bioelectricity generation can be ascribed to the low efficiency of RH33 in utilizing riboflavin for extracellular electron transfer (EET). In the synthetic microbial consortium of MR-1 and RH33, it was found that both mediated and direct electron transfer efficiencies were enhanced. By exchanging the anolyte of MR-1 and RH33, it was confirmed that the improved MFC performance with the synthetic microbial consortium was because MR-1 could efficiently utilize the high concentration of riboflavin produced by RH33. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2017;114: 526-532. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 62 Nanyang Drive, 637457, Singapore.|Residues and Resource Reclamation Centre, Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Ting
T
Liu
School of the Environment, Biofuels Institute, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, China.
Yang-Yang
YY
Yu
Key Laboratory of Systems Bioengineering (Ministry of Education), School of Chemical Engineering & Technology, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China.
Tao
T
Chen
School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 62 Nanyang Drive, 637457, Singapore.
Wei Ning
WN
Chen
D001407:Bacillus / Q000378:metabolism / Q000502:physiology; D001674:Bioelectric Energy Sources / Q000382:microbiology*; D057005:Bioengineering; D059013:Microbial Consortia / Q000502:physiology*; D020592:Shewanella / Q000378:metabolism / Q000502:physiology; D058615:Synthetic Biology
Bacillus; Shewanella; microbial fuel cell; riboflavin; synthetic microbial consortium