Scientists, bioelectronics engineers, said they have created a strain of the deadly E-coli bacteria that can generate electricity as the microbe thrives off raw sewage. 

The breakthrough could not only revolutionize sustainable energy efforts but could transform the well-over 640 billion pounds of human excrement produced each year into a literal gold mine for utility companies.

Electricity has often been generated from rushing water passed turbines, as with hydroelectric dams, or rushing heated steam passed turbines, as with nuclear power and some coal and natural gas-fired plants.

But this new method, which dips two electrodes into a stream of contaminated water, uses a new genetically over-powered version of the E-coli bacteria’s usual electrochemical activity to generate an electric current from sewage to the wires.

E-coli is a wide and diverse group of bacteria that exists in both human and animal intestines, as well as out in nature, where it feasts on decaying organic material. 

The news comes amid ever-more surprising innovations in the field of sustainable energy, including CalTech’s MAPLE spacecraft which proved, in a test made public this June, that it could beam solar energy back to earth from space.

The innovation could dramatically reduce the carbon dioxide emissions that have warmed the climate due to electricity generation from the burning of oil, coal and natural gas.

The researchers report that their unique bioengineered E-coli were three-times better at generating an electrical current than typical bacteria.

And, unlike previous methods, this new strain could produce electricity as it digested or metabolized a variety of organic substances, not just human feces.

‘Though there are exotic microbes that naturally produce electricity, they can only do so in the presence of specific chemicals,’ said to Ardemis Boghossian, a professor of chemical engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL).

Boghossian, one of two bioelectronic experts at the EPFL who worked on the five-member project, published the results of this E-coli research Friday in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Joule.  

She noted that the bacteria’s status as ‘the most widely studied microbe’ is part of what makes these findings so significant.

‘E. coli can grow on a wide range of sources, which allowed us to produce electricity in a wide range of environments,’ Boghossian noted, ‘including from waste water.’ 

Boghossian and her team used a process known as extracellular electron transfer (EET) to engineer the bacteria to make them highly efficient electric microbes.

Creating this complete EET pathway within E. coli, a feat which they report has eluded others, resulted in a bacteria that produced three-times the electrical current generation of conventional strategies for bioelectric bacteria.

The group managed this trick by integrating components from a type of bacterium famous for generating electricity, Shewanella oneidensis MR-1, with their E-coli.

The result was a microbe with an electrical pathway spanning both the inner and outer membranes of each single-celled organisms, expanding their electrical output. 

‘We have set a new record compared to the previous state-of-the-art, which relied only on a partial pathway,’ the study’s lead author Mohammed Mouhib, a doctoral assistant, said. 

Unlike previous efforts to bioengineer such bacteria, the new E. coli strain proved capable of producing electricity while metabolizing a variety of organic substrates.

When the team at EPFL tested their new microbe in beer brewery wastewater — from Les Brasseurs, a local brewery in Lausanne — the electric microbes thrived where strains before it had failed.

‘The exotic electric microbes weren’t even able to survive, whereas our bioengineered electric bacteria were able to flourish exponentially by feeding off this waste,’ according to Boghossian.

They hope to see their results scale up to big municipal-level waste treatment and energy production projects.

‘Instead of putting energy into the system to process organic waste,’ Boghossian said, ‘we are producing electricity while processing organic waste at the same time, hitting two birds with one stone.’ 

The EPFL team said the implications of their study extend beyond waste treatment.

They believe that the engineered E-coli could help power microbial fuel cells and operate special bio-sensors.

‘Our work is quite timely, as engineered bioelectric microbes are pushing the boundaries in more and more real-world applications,’ Mouhib said.

He expressed hope that progress in this field might become more regular. 

‘With all the current research efforts in the field, we are excited about the future of bioelectric bacteria,’ Mouhib said, ‘and can’t wait for us and others to push this technology into new scales.’

Has YOUR transparent phone case turned an unsightly yellow? Here’s the science behind why plastic changes color – and how to clean it

By Stacy Liberatore Deputy Science And Technology Editor For Dailymail.Com

Updated: 09:18 EDT, 19 June 2023

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries signaled he would try to force a vote on a clean debt ceiling raise using a parliamentary tactic known as a discharge petition even as Republicans continue to insist the president must negotiate.

With financial markets eyeing the potential blowback should Republicans and Democrats fail to make a deal, it offers a prospect for moving a solution – but one with low chances of working. 

The Republican bill, which would slash some of President Joe Biden’s favorite programs, is dead on arrival in the Democrat-led Senate. Now Jeffries is using a rarely used procedural tactic where the minority can force a clean debt ceiling bill to the floor. 

The discharge petition allows a sizable group of members to go around leadership to get legislation directly to the floor.

‘We will be in direct contact next week upon our return to Washington in connection with the discharge effort,’ Jeffries wrote in a Dear Colleague letter. 

But Jeffries, of New York, would need the signature of five GOP moderates in the House to bring the bill forward, in addition to all of his members, and he would need 60 votes in the Senate to get it through. 

Only two discharge petitions have ever gotten through the House – in part because party leaders drill into their caucuses not to let the minority party seize control of the agenda and undermine their leverage.

Both Democrats and Republicans are feeling a new sense of urgency after the Treasury announced Monday the nation could run out of money to pay its bills as early as June 1. 

President Biden has convened a meeting with McCarthy for May 9, after three months of refusing to meet with the GOP leader – though he insists he still will not negotiate on the debt ceiling. 

He’s also invited Jeffries, Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell – who will all attend the meeting. 

Biden’s insistence that he won’t negotiate is proving unpopular with Americans – a majority in both parties and 74 percent of all respondents to an Echelon Insights poll  insist the president ‘should agree to negotiations and try to find common ground around the debt ceiling, including some reductions in government spending.’

Though McConnell said he would be witness to the negotiations, he stressed the Senate had no central role in striking a deal. 

‘The president and the speaker need to reach an agreement,’ he said. ‘There is no solution in the Senate.’ 

Meanwhile Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer insisted the Senate pass a clean debt ceiling package — throwing cold water on the idea floated by some Republicans of a short-term 30-day debt ceiling extension. 

He put a vote for a clean debt ceiling bill on the Senate floor calendar.

‘We should not kick the can down the road. We should go for a full two year [extension],’ he said.

He plans to bring a bill increasing the debt limit until December 21, 2024 and insists the time to talk about budget cuts is not until after the debt limit is increased. 

Schumer also tamped down the possibility of invoking the 14th Amendment – as one idea thrown around cites a little-used provision that states: ‘The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.’

It offers a potential workaround in case negotiations collapse completely leading to a potential default scenario, but the move would be full of uncertainty, both politically and for markets. 

‘The way to go is a clean debt ceiling,’ Schumer said. 

Senate Republicans backed up Speaker McCarthy in saying no debt ceiling bill would happen unless Democrats agreed to budget cuts.  

‘A clean debt ceiling is not going to happen,’ said Senate GOP Whip John Thune of South Dakota. 

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday that in the meeting Biden won’t negotiate the GOP’s demands for raising the debt limit, but ‘will discuss initiating a separate process to address the budget and appropriations.’ 

‘The only practical path is to suspend the debt limit without conditions,’ Jean-Pierre said. 

Last week House Republicans passed a party-line bill that would raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion in exchange for $4.5 trillion in spending cuts. Biden had long insisted he would sit down with the speaker once Republicans had a plan in writing.