Impedance spectroscopy of single bacterial nanofilament reveals water-mediated charge transfer

PLoS One. 2018 Jan 19;13(1):e0191289. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0191289. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

For decades respiratory chain and photosystems were the main firing field of the studies devoted to mechanisms of electron transfer in proteins. The concept of conjugated lateral electron and transverse proton transport during cellular respiration and photosynthesis, which was formulated in the beginning of 1960-s, has been confirmed by thousands of experiments. However, charge transfer in recently discovered bacterial nanofilaments produced by various electrogenic bacteria is regarded currently outside of electron and proton conjugation concept. Here we report the new study of charge transfer within nanofilaments produced by Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 conducted in atmosphere of different relative humidity (RH). We utilize impedance spectroscopy and DC (direct current) transport measurements to find out the peculiarities of conductivity and Raman spectroscopy to analyze the nanofilaments' composition. Data analysis demonstrates that apparent conductivity of nanofilaments has crucial sensitivity to humidity and contains several components including one with unusual behavior which we assign to electron transport. We demonstrate that in the case of Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 charge transfer within these objects is strongly mediated by water. Basing on current data analysis of conductivity we conclude that the studied filaments of Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 are capable of hybrid (conjugated) electron and ion conductivity.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Cytochromes / chemistry
  • Cytochromes / metabolism
  • Dielectric Spectroscopy
  • Electron Transport
  • Heme / metabolism
  • Humidity
  • Shewanella / cytology
  • Shewanella / metabolism*
  • Water / metabolism*

Substances

  • Cytochromes
  • Water
  • Heme

Grants and funding

This work is funded by OPTEC grant for young scientists, Russian Ministry of Education and Science (Program 5 top 100), grant N3.9896.2017/BY and grant No.14Y.26.31.0007, RFBR Grants Nr. 16-34-00812, 15-02-04285, 15-52-78023, 16-32-00805 and 13-02-12127. This work was performed using equipment of MIPT Shared Facilities Center and with financial support from the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation (Grant No. RFMEFI59417X0014). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.