Order-of-magnitude enhancement in photocurrent generation of Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 by outer membrane deprivation

Shoko Kusama, Seiji Kojima (), Ken Kimura, Ginga Shimakawa, Chikahiro Miyake, Kenya Tanaka, Yasuaki Okumura and Shuji Nakanishi ()
Additional contact information
Shoko Kusama: Osaka University
Seiji Kojima: Panasonic Holdings Corporation
Ken Kimura: Osaka University
Ginga Shimakawa: Osaka University
Chikahiro Miyake: Kobe University
Kenya Tanaka: Osaka University
Yasuaki Okumura: Panasonic Holdings Corporation
Shuji Nakanishi: Osaka University

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Biophotovoltaics (BPV) generates electricity from reducing equivalent(s) produced by photosynthetic organisms by exploiting a phenomenon called extracellular electron transfer (EET), where reducing equivalent(s) is transferred to external electron acceptors. Although cyanobacteria have been extensively studied for BPV because of their high photosynthetic activity and ease of handling, their low EET activity poses a limitation. Here, we show an order-of-magnitude enhancement in photocurrent generation of the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 by deprivation of the outer membrane, where electrons are suggested to stem from pathway(s) downstream of photosystem I. A marked enhancement of EET activity itself is verified by rapid reduction of exogenous electron acceptor, ferricyanide. The extracellular organic substances, including reducing equivalent(s), produced by this cyanobacterium serve as respiratory substrates for other heterotrophic bacteria. These findings demonstrate that the outer membrane is a barrier that limits EET. Therefore, depriving this membrane is an effective approach to exploit the cyanobacterial reducing equivalent(s).

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-30764-z Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-30764-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-30764-z

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().