Abstract
Although electrical interactions of living cells have been known since Galvani’s time, the advantages of interfacing electrotechnology with biology have not yet been fully appreciated. The workings of the cell involve many types of charge-transfer process (e.g. biochemical ‘redox’ reactions, ion-transport and diffusion), and in some senses the micro-organism can be regarded as an electrochemical machine2 which, if interfaced with an electrochemical system, can be manipulated by ‘taking’ electrons from the biosystem or ‘pushing’ them back in. Since electrochemistry is itself becoming increasingly versatile and is ideally suited to ‘fine tuning’ by computer control, it is to be expected that such application will broaden the scope of process-control, products and devices available to biotechnology. Some likely areas for exploitation of electron transduction from micro-organisms are summarised below.
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Bennetto, H.P., Delaney, G.M., Mason, J.R., Roller, S.D., Stirling, J.L., Thurston, C.F. (1988). Applications of Microbial Electrochemistry. In: Greenshields, R. (eds) Resources and Applications of Biotechnology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09574-2_33
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09574-2_33
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