Well, the existence of an extracellular enzyme that can oxidize iron is pretty cool. I'm sure we could come up with neat uses for that. One reason we are looki

Well, the existence of an extracellular enzyme that can oxidize iron is pretty cool. I'm sure we could come up with neat uses for that. One reason we are looking into these "extremophiles", as they're termed, is because electron flow at a molecular level is pretty important when it comes to renewable energy. Things like solar panels and batteries are still environmentally damaging. The DoD and DoE are both very interested in experimenting with methanogens, cyanobacteria, etc, to figure out ways to harness and manipulate electrons from the environment. The chemical mechanisms these cells employ are typically higher-order and not super useful. The more low level the interaction (e.g. the NiFe hydrogenase referenced in the article), the more potentially useful to us. There may not be one particular plug-and-play use case like there is for say, a PETase, but we currently don't entirely understand how electrons move around in an ordered way, and so elucidating that mechanism is a high priority. At this point we have it narrowed down to Fe-S clusters in enzymes, and some particular organic intermediates. As with any process of discovery, the lower-level the organism we can investigate, the hopefully clearer picture we can generate.