Characterization of Electrogenic Gut Bacteria

While electrogenic, or electricity-producing, Gram-negative bacteria predominantly found in anaerobic habitats have been intensively explored, the potential of Gram-positive microbial electrogenic capability residing in a similar anoxic environment has not been considered. Because Gram-positive bacteria contain a thick non-conductive cell wall, they were previously believed to be very weak exoelectrogens. However, with the recent discovery of electrogenicity by Gram-positive pathogens and elucidation of their electron-transfer pathways, significant and accelerated attention has been given to the discovery and characterization of these pathways in the members of gut microbiota. The discovery of electrogenic bacteria present in the human gut and the understanding of their electrogenic capacity opens up possibilities of bacterial powered implantable batteries and provide a novel biosensing platform to monitor human gastrointestinal health. In this work, we characterized microbial extracellular electron-transfer capabilities and capacities of five gut bacteria: Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococcus faecalis, Streptococcus agalactiae, Lactobacillus reuteri, and Lactobacillus rhamnosus. A 21-well paper-based microbial fuel cell array with enhanced sensitivity was developed as a powerful yet simple screening method to accurately and simultaneously characterize bacterial electrogenicity. S. aureus, E. faecalis, and S. agalactiae exhibited distinct electrogenic capabilities, and their power generations were comparable to that of the well-known Gram-negative exoelectrogen, Shewanella oneidensis. Importantly, this system was used to begin a large-scale transposon screen to examine the genes involved in electrogenicity by the human pathobiont S. aureus.