Harvesting energy from cellulose through Geobacter sulfurreducens in Unique ternary culture

In this study, both electricity generation capability and biodegradation process of carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) were investigated using a defined ternary culture of Paenibacillus sp., Klebsiella sp. and Geobacter sulfurreducens as biocatalysts in MFCs. The maximum current density achieved by the ternary culture from CMC was 621 ± 23 μA cm^-2 in half-cell experiments and the maximum power density reached to 1146 ± 28 mW m^-2 in two-chamber MFCs. Meanwhile, the ternary culture also possessed three times higher CMC degradation capability compared to the pure strain J1. Besides, the key metabolite products, including cellobiose, glucose, acetate, were quantified by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to illustrate the biodegradation process of CMC. The high electricity generation performance mainly resulted from the "division-of-labor" based cooperation and the enhanced extracellular electron transfer caused by the electron shuttle secreted by Klebsiella sp. This study highlighted the synergistic effect of specific community on electricity generation using CMC as carbon source, and laid the foundation for further optimization of more efficient and stable microbial consortia for bioenergy applications.