Ascending Investigator Grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation: Harnessing microbes to store electricity and capture carbon dioxide in sustainable chemicals.

We face three biotechnology challenges: producing chemicals sustainably, capturing carbon dioxide, and storing renewable energy. This proposal deals with the fundamental understanding of a technology where all three challenges are addressed concomitantly. My group recently discovered that certain microorganisms used in biotechnology (methanogens called Methanosarcinales) directly capture renewable energy and carbon dioxide, converting these into useful chemicals, which can be stored. Nevertheless, we do not understand how these microorganisms capture electrical energy directly, a mechanism which we will explore in this proposal. We will then evaluate whether we can use this method of direct energy capture inherently or whether we can engineer it to create a solution to producing chemicals sustainably, capturing carbon dioxide, and storing renewable energy.