Extracellular electron transfer in microbial biocorrosion

Biocorrosion by microbial biofilms is also termed microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC). For many decades in MIC research, people focused on corrosive metabolites. In the past decade, researchers started to apply bioenergetics to MIC science research. They realized that extracellular oxidation of a metal can supply electrons for microbial respiration, which causes MIC. Because these electrons must be transported to the cytoplasm via extracellular electron transfer (EET), this kind of MIC is called EET-MIC, which is different from metabolite-MIC (M-MIC). Advances have been made to decipher inward EET involved in MIC. Carbon source starvation and electron mediator acceleration have been used to study impact of EET on MIC. More recently, manipulations of electron mediator-related genes have been used to elucidate EET in MIC. EET in energy metabolism in microbiology and EET for MIC are intertwined. Well-established corrosion research tools, especially electrochemical methods that are highly sensitive, are useful for microbiologists to study EET.