CPOS Seminar: Bioelectricity production from cells and organisms

Speaker: Yaniv Shlosberg, Otis Williams Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California Santa Barbara 

Abstract: In recent years, big efforts are done to develop new clean energy technologies that will supply the increasing energy demand without contaminating the environment. One of the approaches that is being developed for more than 100 years is the utilization of exo-electrogenic bacteria as electron donors in microbial fuel cells. In our work, we show that the concept of integrating live biological cells and organisms is not limited to microorganisms and may utilize a broad variety of bio-components such as neural cells, retinal organoids, fruits, and live sea animals. We further show that the redox species NADH which is formed in the glycolysis pathway is involved in the current generation in all bio-components used by far.