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Carbon Capture and Formate Biosynthesis using a Microbe-Electrode Device

Information

  • Start date: October 2013
  • Programme: PhD
  • Mode of Study: Full Time
  • Studentship Length: 4 Years

How to Apply

Fees & Funding

  • Funding Status: Directly Funded Project (EU Students Only)
    Further Details
  • Funding Source: BBSRC CASE Award (Schlumberger)
  • Funding Conditions:

    Funding from BBSRC is available to successful candidates who meet the UK Research Council eligibility criteria including the 3-year residency requirements in the UK. In most cases UK and EU nationals who have been ordinarily resident in the UK for 3 years prior to the start of the course are eligible for a full-award. Other EU nationals may qualify for a fees only award. Please see the BBSRC PhD studentship eligibility guidelines (below) to confirm your eligibility for funding.

    http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/web/FILES/Guidelines/studentship_eligibility.pdf#search=%22qualification%22

    This studentship also comes with an annual stipend of £13,726.

  • Fees: Fees Information (Opens in new window)
  • Other Funding Info:

    Funding information to be released by the BBSRC in late Spring/Early Summer, but will be equivalent to current BBSRC funded PhD stipends/fees.

Entry Requirements

  • Acceptable First Degree:

    Biological Sciences, Microbiology, Biochemistry

  • Minimum Entry Standard: 2.1

Project Description

Many bacteria found in the environment respire using solid metal-containing minerals. These bacteria move electrons generated during metabolism to the cell surface where they are finally discharged into the insoluble mineral. These electrons are conducted through the cell by a chain of iron-containing cytochromes that connect the cytoplasmic membrane to the cell surface.
In the Shewanella family of bacteria it is possible to reverse this process and use an electrode to supply electrons back into the cell, this process can power enzymes expressed inside the cellular periplasm.  Many Shewanella have a tungsten based formate dehydrogenase (FDH) that could reduce carbon dioxide back into formate, which could be used as a chemical product, or converted back into carbon dioxide in order to provide electric current for a biobattery.

Using a range of state of the art techniques, the PhD will (1) Culture and identify different members of the Shewanella family that express the tungsten form of FDH.  (2) Optimise the expression of the tungsten FDH. (3) Isolate the FDH enzyme and analyse the electrochemical properties of the reversible formate/CO2 reaction. (4) In collaboration with our industrial partner Schlumberger, grow Shewanella on an electrode and develop the electron transfer pathway through the MtrCAB wire and into FDH.
  
The student will join an active, BBSRC-funded research environment, in which the supervisors focus on understanding the pathway of electron transfer through bacteria capable of metal respiration (e.g Richardson et al. 2012, Hartshorne et al. 2009). See more about our groups and interests at www.uea.ac.uk/bio/People/Academic/tom+clarke and www.uea.ac.uk/bio/People/Academic/julea+butt). The project will be carried out within the UEA Centre for Molecular and Structural Biochemistry (CMSB) and will have access to the world-renowned spectroscopic and analytical facilities available at UEA.

References

The 'porin-cytochrome' model for microbe-to-mineral electron transfer.
Richardson DJ, Butt JN, Fredrickson JK, Zachara JM, Shi L, Edwards MJ, White G, Baiden N, Gates AJ, Marritt SJ, Clarke TA. (2012)
Mol Microbiol. 85:201-12

Towards electrosynthesis in shewanella: energetics of reversing the mtr pathway for reductive metabolism.
Ross DE, Flynn JM, Baron DB, Gralnick JA, Bond DR. (2011)
PLoS One: e16649.

Hartshorne RS, Reardon CL,  Ross D, Nuester J, Clarke TA, Gates AJ, Mills PC, Fredrickson JK, Zachara JM, Shi L, Beliaev AS, Marshall MA, Tien M, Brantley S, Butt JN, Richardson DJ (2009)
Characterization of an electron conduit between bacteria and the extracellullar environment
PNAS, 106:22169-74

Reversible interconversion of carbon dioxide and formate by an electroactive enzyme (2008)
Reda T, Plugge CM, Abram NJ, Hirst J.
PNAS. 105:10654-8.



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