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Did anyone catch what these bacteria use as a source of carbon? Do they reduce CO2 with electrons directly? I imagine that would be an amazing feat.
by ejstronge 12y ago
Did anyone catch what these bacteria use as a source of carbon? Do they reduce CO2 with electrons directly? I imagine that would be an amazing feat.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- ejstronge 12y agoI could be mistaken, but I'm actually asking for what these bacteria (e.g., Geobacter) use as a carbon source - that is, where do they get the raw materials to build proteins and DNA? Options are that they reduce CO2 (which could be super cool but surprising for something that lives underground; plants do this in photosynthesis) or that they get their carbon from the environment. It looks like Geobacter can at least use exogenous acetate[1] but it's not clear what was provided to the lab-grown bacteria described in the article. [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1392927/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1392927/ EDIT: The comment that was deleted copied the text from the beginning of the Wikipedia page on Geobacter; I'm pasting it below: Geobacter... [is capable of oxidizing]... iron, radioactive metals and petroleum compounds into environmentally benign carbon dioxide while using iron oxide or other available metals as electron acceptor.
- dnautics 12y agoshewys are typically in fairly carbon-rich environments, so the answer is "probably a lot of things", from acetate to glucose, to more complex stuff like waste nucleotides. AFAICT, shewys don't typically have CO2 fixation capability. It certainly would be possible to engineer the pathway in and I think people are trying. Note that assembling most simple carbon compounds, e.g. acetate, glycerol, etc. into higher order carbon compounds is not energy-positive (except for some sugars and fats with the concommitant release of CO2).