Electric microbial-biofilm induction by synthetic co-cultivation [E-BISC]
Name of applicant
Jamie Lustermans
Title
Postdoctoral Fellow
Institution
Aarhus University
Amount
DKK 2,015,800
Year
2025
Type of grant
Reintegration Fellowships
What?
I will play matchmaker between electric and biofilm-forming bacteria. Electric bacteria can convert excess electric energy into valuable products, but are very bad at staying close to the electric source. I will pair electric bacteria with biofilm formers, specialised in cell attachment. Carefully selected bacteria go on blind dates to see if they help each other and how they do that.
Why?
Electric bacteria that use electricity can use our leftover electricity to make methane or vitamins to store and move the energy (power-to-X). By learning more about how to stick these electricity lovers to the wires, we will know more about how bacteria interact with each other in a biofilm, how the biofilms work, and fundamentally how important they are for power-to-X.
How?
I will pairwise grow the selected electric and biofilm bacteria, but also study them alone. By looking at their DNA and their RNA, I will learn what they do and don’t, how they interact and how they stick together. I will keep track of how much electricity they use to make vitamins or methane. The biofilm development and thickness I will follow with fluorescent staining and microscopy.