According to a statistics from the European Environmental Agency, electricity generation around the world is contributing to the greenhouse effect by releasing about 10 billion tons of carbon annually.
Recently, a group of researchers from Monash University, Australia developed and analyzed a hydrogen-accepting enzyme from common soil bacteria, which converts air into electricity. According to the findings published in the journal Nature, the enzyme is able to generate an electric current using the smallest amount of hydrogen from the atmosphere.
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There are many bacteria in nature that take hydrogen from the atmosphere as an energy source. The researchers isolated HUC, the enzyme responsible for using atmospheric hydrogen, from the bacterium Mycobacterium smegmatis. They developed a blueprint for the enzyme's hydrogen oxidation using several cutting-edge methods determined the atomic structure and electrical pathway of the enzyme using a microscopic technique called cryo-EM. Finally, using the method of electrochemistry, they determined the amount of electricity produced per minute based on the concentration of hydrogen.
Research has also shown that, being more stable HUC enzymes can be frozen, stored at temperatures as high as 80°C, and stored for long periods of time.
That means, the enzyme helps bacteria survive in extreme environments. Also, bacteria that produce HUC-like enzymes can grow abundance in nature.
This discovery opened the way for new wind-powered devices as alternatives to solar-powered devices. According to scientists, once enough HUC enzymes are produced, the sky will be the only limit for generating electricity from clean sources. Enzymes can be one of the tools for sustainable power generation against environmental pollution.
Reference:
Rhys Grinter et al, 08 March 2023, Structural basis for bacterial energy extraction from atmospheric hydrogen, Nature, DOI: doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05781-7