Project R-9973

Living electrical wires: unravelling the intrinsic electrical properties of Cable Bacteria filaments (Research)

Cable bacteria are recently discovered, long, filamentous organisms found in marine sediments with a unique energy metabolism which requires charge transport over centimeter distances. A breakthrough obtained by X-LAB in collaboration with partners of UAntwerpen and TU-Delft is the direct evidence of DC conductivity for cable bacteria filaments for conduction lengths up to 1 centimeter and with fiber conductivities exceeding 10 S/cm. These results unambiguously demonstrate that cable bacteria have intrinsic electrical properties that allow electron transport over unprecedented lengths in the biological world. The general objective of this cross-disciplinary project is to obtain a better understanding and modeling of the intrinsic electrical properties of cable bacteria in relation to their parallel network structure and to the underlying electron transport mechanism, which can have a significant impact on the fundamental understanding of long-distance electron transport in biology.

01 October 2019 - 30 September 2023