To explore how TIE-1 could be exploited to produce biofuel, Bai and Bose constructed a mutant form of the microbe that could not fix nitrogen. However, these types of organisms produce oxygen during photosynthesis, which tends to limit their efficiency for synthesizing biofuels, as many of the enzymes involved in the biosynthetic pathways are oxygen-sensitive. Other researchers previously have explored the use of microbes such as cyanobacteria to produce sustainable biofuels. Previous research from the Bose lab helped illuminate how microbes such as TIE-1 use electrons to fix carbon dioxide and also how they can be used to create sustainable bioplastics.Īs scientists learn more about these microbes, their potential uses are more and more promising, Bose said, though she acknowledged that improvements are needed before the techniques can be rolled out on industrial scales. Microbes that feed through microbial electrosynthesis attach themselves directly to a negatively charged cathode inside the MES reactor so that they can “eat” electricity. Bai is now a scientist at Amyris, a manufacturer of sustainable ingredients made with synthetic biology. Bai worked as a research assistant in the Bose lab in Arts & Sciences from 2015-2020. The first author of the study is Wei Bai, a PhD graduate of McKelvey Engineering’s Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering. Arpita Bose, associate professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, and leader of the study

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