Bacteriofiles

This episode: Copper electrodes, rather than killing bacteria in microbial fuel cells, allow them to generate higher densities of electric current! Download Episode (5.0 MB, 7.2 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Xipapillomavirus 2   News item Takeaways Copper is widely used as a way to make surfaces and materials antimicrobial, to cut down on the spread of pathogens in hospitals and other environments. Among other mechanisms, it reacts with oxygen to form reactive oxygen species that are very harsh on microbial proteins. But copper is also a good electrical conductor, which would be useful to use in microbial fuel cells, which exploit bacterial metabolism to generate electricity. Microbes form biofilms on an electrode and transfer electrons to it as a way for them to generate energy. Most such fuel cells have used graphite electrodes to avoid toxicity.   In this study, fuel cell bacteria grew well on a copper electrode in an oxygen-free environment. The copper actually allowed them to increase t