Team:Missouri Miners

Microbial Fuel Cell abstract:

    Optimization of electron shuffle to external surfaces such as anodes is a primary goal.  Geobacter sulfurreducens happens to be our model bacteria due to its ability in nature to efficiently export electrons extracelluarly.  E. coli can be the chassis for this experiment due to its genome already containing some key proteins in our preferred pathway.  The proteins, such as extracellular pilin, MacA, and many other cytochromes, which E. coli does not have will be isolated from Geobacter sulfurreducens and introduced into E. coli to formulate the most optimal pathway for generating electronmotive force in a microbial fuel cell apparatus.  
    Some problems will be faced concerning plasmid engineering and the simple fact that Geobacter is anaerobic and E. coli is aerobic.  As a team, we will push in the right direction harder than an emf on the internal resistivity of a toroid.  Many diverse team members will work in concert utilizing Missouri S&T’s dominating Electrical, Chemical, and Biological Engineering undergraduates along with Biological Science masterminds.