Interspecies Wiring With Extracellular RNA
Name of applicant
Amelia-Elena Rotaru
Title
Professor
Institution
University of Southern Denmark
Amount
DKK 13,000,000
Year
2025
Type of grant
Semper Ardens: Accomplish
What?
Methane-producing microbes play a crucial role in climate and energy systems. We recently discovered that a widespread methanogen can extract electrons from electrodes via a layer of extracellular RNAs (eRNAs). This project explores whether eRNAs form conductive, sensing, and signaling networks that enable interspecies cooperation even under the most energy-limiting conditions on Earth.
Why?
Whether in multicellular organisms or microbial communities, life must coordinate across distance and difference. In higher organisms, eRNAs help sense redox changes and synchronize behavior. If microbes evolved to use eRNAs to both conduct electrons, sense redox changes, and coordinate behavior, it would reshape our understanding of interspecies cooperations, central to climate and green biotech.
How?
We will combine anaerobic microbiology, electrochemistry, RNA biology, and transcriptomics to uncover how extracellular RNAs enable electron exchange, redox sensing, and coordination in methanogenic consortia. Using advanced imaging, electrochemical assays, and spatial RNA-seq, we’ll map how RNA-based networks shape microbial cooperation under energy-limiting conditions.