Abstract
The effect of central metabolic activity of Escherichia coli cells acting as biocatalysts on the performance of microbial fuel cells (MFCs) was studied with glucose used as the energy source. Milliliter-scale two-chambered MFCs were used with 2-hydroxy-1,4-naphthoquinone (HNQ) as an electron mediator. Among the single-gene deletions examined, frdA, pdhR, ldhA, and adhE increased the average power output of the constructed MFC. Next, multiple-gene knockout mutants were constructed using P1 transduction. The Δ5 (ΔfrdAΔpdhRΔldhAΔadhEΔpta) strain showed the highest ave. power output (1.82 mW) and coulombic efficiency (21.3%). Our results show that the combination of multiple-gene knockout in E. coli cells leads to the development of an excellent catalyst for MFCs. Finally, preventing a decrease in the pH of the anodic solution was a key factor for improving the power output of the Δ5 strain, and a maximum ave. power output of 2.21 mW was achieved with 5% NaHCO3 in the buffer. The ave. power density of the constructed MFC was 0.27 mW/cm3, which is comparable to an enzymatic fuel cell of a Milliliter-scale using glucose dehydrogenase.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Choudhury P, Prasad Uday US, Bandyopadhyay TK, Ray RN, Bhunia B (2017) Performance improvement of microbial fuel cell (MFC) using suitable electrode and Bioengineered organisms: a review. Bioengineered 8:471–487
Li M, Zhou M, Tian X, Tan C, McDaniel CT, Hassett DJ, Gu T (2018) Microbial fuel cell (MFC) power performance improvement through enhanced microbial electrogenicity. Biotechnol Adv 36:1316–1327
Santoro C, Arbizzani C, Erable B, Ieropoulos I (2017) Microbial fuel cells: From fundamentals to applications A review. J Power Sources 356:225–244
Oliveira VB, Simões M, Melo LF, Pinto AMFR (2013) Overview on the developments of microbial fuel cells. Biochem Eng J 73:53–64
Potter MC (1911) Electrical effects accompanying the decomposition of organic compounds. Proc R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 84:260–276
Liu J, Yong Y-C, Song H, Li CM (2012) Activation enhancement of citric acid cycle to promote bioelectrocatalytic activity of arcA knockout Escherichia coli toward high-performance microbial fuel cell. ACS Catal 2:1749–1752
Ojima Y, Kawata T, Matsuo N, Nishinoue Y, Taya M (2014) Recovery of electric energy from formate by using a recombinant strain of Escherichia coli. Bioprocess Biosyst Eng 37:2005–2008
Wang C-T, Chen W-J, Huang R-Y (2010) Influence of growth curve phase on electricity performance of microbial fuel cell by Escherichia coli. Int J Hydrogen Energ 35:7217–7223
Logan BE, Regan JM (2006) Electricity-producing bacterial communities in microbial fuel cells. Trends Microbiol 14:512–518
Lovley DR (2006) Microbial fuel cells: novel microbial physiologies and engineering approaches. Curr Opin Biotechnol 17:327–332
Feng J, Qian Y, Wang Z, Wang X, Xu S, Chen K, Ouyang P (2018) Enhancing the performance of Escherichia coli-inoculated microbial fuel cells by introduction of the phenazine-1-carboxylic acid pathway. J Biotechnol 275:1–6
Jensen HM, Albers AE, Malley KR, Londer YY, Cohen BE, Helms BA, Weigele P, Groves JT, Ajo-Franklin CM (2010) Engineering of a synthetic electron conduit in living cells. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 107:19213–19218
Jensen HM, TerAvest MA, Kokish MG, Ajo-Franklin CM (2016) CymA and exogenous flavins improve extracellular electron transfer and couple it to cell growth in Mtr-expressing Escherichia coli. ACS Synth Biol 5:679–688
Sturm-Richter K, Golitsch F, Sturm G, Kipf E, Dittrich A, Beblawy S, Kerzenmacher S, Gescher J (2015) Unbalanced fermentation of glycerol in Escherichia coli via heterologous production of an electron transport chain and electrode interaction in microbial electrochemical cells. Bioresour Technol 186:89–96
Yong YC, Yu YY, Yang Y, Liu J, Wang JY, Song H (2013) Enhancement of extracellular electron transfer and bioelectricity output by synthetic porin. Biotechnol Bioeng 110:408–416
Park IH, Heo YH, Kim P, Nahm KS (2013) Direct electron transfer in E. coli catalyzed MFC with a magnetite/MWCNT modified anode. RSC Adv 3:16665–16671
Singh S, Modi A, Verma N (2016) Enhanced power generation using a novel polymer-coated nanoparticles dispersed-carbon micro-nanofibers-based air-cathode in a membrane-less single chamber microbial fuel cell. Int J Hydrogen Energ 41:1237–1247
Zhou X, Chen X, Li H, Xiong J, Li X, Li W (2016) Surface oxygen-rich titanium as anode for high performance microbial fuel cell. Electrochim Acta 209:582–590
Baba T, Ara T, Hasegawa M, Takai Y, Okumura Y, Baba M, Datsenko KA, Tomita M, Wanner BL, Mori H (2006) Construction of Escherichia coli K-12 in-frame, single-gene knockout mutants: The Keio collection. Mol Syst Biol 2(2006):0008
Koma D, Yamanaka H, Moriyoshi K, Ohmoto T, Sakai K (2012) A convenient method for multiple insertions of desired genes into target loci on the Escherichia coli chromosome. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 93:815–829
Kaneshiro H, Takano K, Takada Y, Wakisaka T, Tachibana T, Azuma M (2014) A milliliter-scale yeast-based fuel cell with high performance. Biochem Eng J 83:90–96
Liu H, Logan BE (2004) Electricity generation using an air-cathode single chamber microbial fuel cell in the presence and absence of a proton exchange membrane. Environ Sci Technol 38:4040–4046
Clark DP (1989) The fermentation pathways of Escherichia coli. FEMS Microbiol Rev 63:223–234
Partridge JD, Sanguinetti G, Dibden DP, Roberts RE, Poole RK, Green J (2007) Transition of Escherichia coli from aerobic to micro-aerobic conditions involves fast and slow reacting regulatory components. J Biol Chem 282:11230–11237
Maklashina E, Berthold DA, Cecchini G (1998) Anaerobic expression of Escherichia coli succinate dehydrogenase: functional replacement of fumarate reductase in the respiratory chain during anaerobic growth. J Bacteriol 180:5989–5996
Mazumdar S, Clomburg JM, Gonzalez R (2010) Escherichia coli strains engineered for homofermentative production of D-lactic acid from glycerol. Appl Environ Microbiol 76:4327–4336
Zhou L, Zuo ZR, Chen XZ, Niu DD, Tian KM, Prior BA, Shen W, Shi GY, Singh S, Wang ZX (2011) Evaluation of genetic manipulation strategies on D-lactate production by Escherichia coli. Curr Microbiol 62:981–989
Maeda S, Shimizu K, Kihira C, Iwabu Y, Kato R, Sugimoto M, Fukiya S, Wada M, Yokota A (2017) Pyruvate dehydrogenase complex regulator (PdhR) gene deletion boosts glucose metabolism in Escherichia coli under oxygen-limited culture conditions. J Biosci Bioeng 123:437–443
Sakai H, Mita H, Sugiyama T, Tokita Y, Shirai O, Kano K (2014) Construction of a multi-stacked sheet-type enzymatic biofuel cell. Electrochemistry 82:156–161
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) Grant number 17K06932 from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. We thank the Edanz Group (www.edanzediting.com/ac) for editing a draft of this manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ojima, Y., Kawaguchi, T., Fukui, S. et al. Promoted performance of microbial fuel cells using Escherichia coli cells with multiple-knockout of central metabolism genes. Bioprocess Biosyst Eng 43, 323–332 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00449-019-02229-z
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00449-019-02229-z