hydrothermal vent Mariprofundus ferrooxydans bacteria can live on electricity
The hydrothermal vent bacteria Mariprofundus ferrooxydans has been found in an experiment that it can live and grow by being powered by a tiny current of electricity only!
In the experiment the Mariprofundus ferrooxydans bacteria, who normally live of oxidised iron where under water vents are found, were put in various conditions and one of them was that the energy source consisted only of a small electrical current. They continued to grow and exchange chemicals/energy to do what they were designed to do by nature. Perhaps the nature of an Electric Universe?
When you combine these bacteria with the
eletric Desulfobulbaceae bacteria who create amazing carbon chains and grids to conduct and convert electricity then you really are starting to see the Electrical Universe basis of nature.
Is it electromagnetic forces and fields that starts or moulds life? If it is then each time the electromagnetic energy of our planet or the solar system changes due to some catastrophe then will not life itself also change?
Researchers at the University of Minnesota, St. Paul, have coaxed a species of bacteria into trading their usual diet of partially-oxidized iron for a small current of electricity--a trick that may eventually make the microorganisms useful producers of biofuels.
When plenty of oxygen is present, ferrous iron readily gives up its extra electron to the oxygen, to become the more stable FeIII, or ferric iron--the kind of iron oxide we know of as rust. But in lower-oxygen environments, M. ferrooxydans' can do oxygen's job for it, thereby gaining energy from the extra electron.
After letting the microbes multiply over the surface of the electrode for four weeks, they scraped some away and started a new colony on an electrode with no FeII around. Amazingly, the bacteria continued to thrive, even after some were transplanted onward to a third electrode. Some nutrients were still provided to this colony, the study noted, but in amounts much too small to support the bacterium's apparent growth.
The results show that bacteria like M. ferrooxydans are capable of using electricity from electrodes to capture carbon dioxide and replicate.
Scientists Teach Bacteria To Eat Electricity | popsci.com/science
