Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are a type of fuel cells that use bacteria as biocatalyst to oxidize an organic substrate to release electrons, which can be harvested in an external circuit to produce electric energy. This technology hold the potential to help overcome energetic problems and at the same time treat waste water more efficiently than the current employed techniques. Despite all this p...

Microbial species have evolved diverse mechanisms for utilization of complex carbon sources. Proper combination of targeted species can affect bioenergy production from natural waste products. Here, we established a stable microbial consortium with Escherichia coli and Shewanella oneidensis in microbial fuel cells (MFCs) to produce bioenergy from an abundant natural energy source, in the form o...

The possibility of generating electricity with microbial fuel cells has been recognized for some time, but practical applications have been slow to develop. The recent development of a microbial fuel cell that can harvest electricity from the organic matter stored in marine sediments has demonstrated the feasibility of producing useful amounts of electricity in remote environments. Further stud...

Growing awareness of heterogeneity in cells of microbial populations has emphasized the importance of advanced microscopy for visualization and understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying cell-to-cell variation. In this review, we highlight some of the recent advances in confocal microscopy, super-resolution optical microscopy (STED, SIM, PALM) as well as atomic force microscopy and Ra...

Batch foam separation has been employed to separate Saccharomyces carlsbergensis cells from their broth without the use of any external surface-active agent. A model has been developed to predict the foamate cell concentration as well as the variation of cell concentration in the bulk liquid in the foam column as a function of time. The model assumes a linear equilibrium relation between the ce...

The purpose of this chapter is to review recent work in biofuel cells -that is, fuel cells relying at least in part on enzymatic catalysis for their activity. The chapter is divided into three sections: (1) a brief review of the principles common to fuel cells (both biological and non-biological), supported with a bibliography of more comprehensive treatments, (2) an overview of the literature ...

T cells that express the γδ T-cell receptor, which recognize microbial or stress-induced antigens, represent a minority of blood T cells but constitute a major proportion of intraepithelial lymphocytes in the gastrointestinal mucosa. As microbial products have been shown to translocate from the gastrointestinal tract into circulation in chronically HIV/Simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)-infect...

Evidence showed that chemokines serve as pro-migratory factors for immune cells. CCL3, CCL4 and CCL5, as the main CC  chemokines subfamily members, activate immune cells through binding to CC chemokine receptor 5 or CCR5. Macrophages, NK cells and T lymphocytes express CCR5 and thus, affected CCR5 expression or functions could be associated with altered immune responses. Deletion of 32 base pai...