Imperial College London
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Dr. Jia Li

Faculty of Medicine, Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction

Reader in Biological Chemistry
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 3230jia.li

 
 
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Location

 

10.N2ACommonwealth BuildingHammersmith Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Hodgson:2016:10.3389/fmicb.2016.00699,
author = {Hodgson, DM and Smith, A and Dahale, S and Stratford, JP and Li, JV and Grüning, A and Bushell, ME and Marchesi, JR and Avignone, Rossa C},
doi = {10.3389/fmicb.2016.00699},
journal = {Frontiers in Microbiology},
pages = {699--699},
title = {Segregation of the Anodic Microbial Communities in a Microbial Fuel Cell Cascade.},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2016.00699},
volume = {7},
year = {2016}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Metabolic interactions within microbial communities are essential for the efficient degradation of complex organic compounds, and underpin natural phenomena driven by microorganisms, such as the recycling of carbon-, nitrogen-, and sulfur-containing molecules. These metabolic interactions ultimately determine the function, activity and stability of the community, and therefore their understanding would be essential to steer processes where microbial communities are involved. This is exploited in the design of microbial fuel cells (MFCs), bioelectrochemical devices that convert the chemical energy present in substrates into electrical energy through the metabolic activity of microorganisms, either single species or communities. In this work, we analyzed the evolution of the microbial community structure in a cascade of MFCs inoculated with an anaerobic microbial community and continuously fed with a complex medium. The analysis of the composition of the anodic communities revealed the establishment of different communities in the anodes of the hydraulically connected MFCs, with a decrease in the abundance of fermentative taxa and a concurrent increase in respiratory taxa along the cascade. The analysis of the metabolites in the anodic suspension showed a metabolic shift between the first and last MFC, confirming the segregation of the anodic communities. Those results suggest a metabolic interaction mechanism between the predominant fermentative bacteria at the first stages of the cascade and the anaerobic respiratory electrogenic population in the latter stages, which is reflected in the observed increase in power output. We show that our experimental system represents an ideal platform for optimization of processes where the degradation of complex substrates is involved, as well as a potential tool for the study of metabolic interactions in complex microbial communities.
AU  - Hodgson,DM
AU  - Smith,A
AU  - Dahale,S
AU  - Stratford,JP
AU  - Li,JV
AU  - Grüning,A
AU  - Bushell,ME
AU  - Marchesi,JR
AU  - Avignone,Rossa C
DO  - 10.3389/fmicb.2016.00699
EP  - 699
PY  - 2016///
SN  - 1664-302X
SP  - 699
TI  - Segregation of the Anodic Microbial Communities in a Microbial Fuel Cell Cascade.
T2  - Frontiers in Microbiology
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2016.00699
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/37577
VL  - 7
ER  -
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