Iron biogeobatteries are sustainable electron sources and sinks in the environment

获得能源资源对全球发展至关重要，随着气候紧急情况的加剧，越来越明显的是，我们需要开发替代方法来开采和储存能源。一种未得到充分利用的方法是利用细菌，这些细菌数十亿年来一直在一种化合物或另一种化合物之间穿梭电子。尽管这些“迷你发电站”在地球上的每个生态系统中无处不在，但我们才刚刚开始触及它们的能力的皮毛。近年来，不同类型的呼吸铁细菌使用铁基生物地球化学电池(生物地球电池)的能力已经出现。生物生物是一种混合价态的铁矿物，含有还原和氧化形式的铁，可以在不经历物理转化的情况下可持续地充当电子源或电子汇。这一对生物地理植被的广泛定义可能适用于各种矿物相，如氧化铁、含铁粘土、硫化物或绿锈。这种矿物在地球上无处不在，可能是地下环境中很大一部分能量转移的原因。这个项目将对细菌如何进入生物地理基地有一个基本的了解，这样我们就可以学习如何释放这种潜力，甚至可能启动用于偏远地区的低成本、低功率能量存储设备的进步。这将通过确定混合价铁矿物作为铁生物覆盖物的基本功能并确定它们在环境中的重要性来实现。要了解生物地理生物在环境中的作用，需要使用专门的分析技术，如Moessbauer光谱分析和电子显微镜，再加上湿化学溶解方法。更多地接触到这些类型的仪器正在导致实验数据的爆炸性增长。然而，有效分析这一迅速增长的海量数据及其后续解释的能力仍然是一个悬而未决的问题。为了克服这一障碍，并引领环境科学数据分析的转变，我将创建一个在线分析Moessbauer光谱数据的新平台。这将与传统方法形成对比，传统方法使人们能够访问包含已分析和未分析的数据集的不断更新的数据库。通过监督和非监督工具的结合，可以简化复杂环境样本的复杂性。长期目标是扩展到一系列分析方法，以适应许多不同研究领域的要求，包括(生物)地球化学、地球物理、古地磁学、地球微生物学和天体生物学等无数其他领域。由于该系统完全设计为在网络浏览器内工作，它可以在任何相对基本的电脑或智能手机上运行，并接入低带宽互联网连接。这将使环境科学向更广泛的全球社会开放，而不需要投资于专业知识或昂贵的设备和软件。这个平台还提供了一个改变我们看待数据的方式的机会，最大限度地减少了不确定性，并有助于为后续的科学家们铺平学习曲线。总体而言，UKRI FLF提案中描述的工作是高度创新和多学科的，将环境矿物学、地球化学和地球微生物学与数据分析的计算方法相结合，开辟了环境科学的一个新的令人兴奋的分支。该项目的成功实施将对加深我们对微生物和矿物相互作用的基本了解，以及利用自然资源满足能源储存需求方面产生重大影响。这项工作还将产生广泛的影响，从细菌如何产生或隔离温室气体，到水质，以及有毒金属和类金属释放到含水层、土壤和沉积物中。

Access to energy resources is critical to global development, and as the climate emergency intensifies it is becoming increasingly evident that we need to develop alternative ways to extract and store energy. An underexploited approach takes advantage of bacteria which have been shuttling electrons between one compound or another for billions of years. Despite the ubiquity of these "mini power stations" in every ecosystem on Earth, we have only just begun to scratch the surface of what they are capable of. In recent years, the ability for different types of iron breathing bacteria to use iron based biogeochemical batteries (biogeobatteries) has emerged. Biogeobatteries are mixed valence iron minerals containing both reduced and oxidized forms of iron that can sustainably act as electron sources or sinks without undergoing physical transformation. This broad definition of a biogeobattery potentially applies to a wide range of mineral phases such as iron oxides, iron-bearing clays, sulphides or green rust. Such minerals are ubiquitous across the planet and could be responsible for a large proportion of energy transfer in subsurface environments. This project will develop a fundamental understanding of how bacteria access biogeobatteries, so that we can learn how to release this potential and perhaps even initiate the advancement of low-cost, low-power energy storage devices for remote locations. This will be achieved by determining the fundamental function of mixed valence iron minerals as iron biogeobatteries and establishing their importance in the environment. Understanding the function of biogeobatteries in the environment needs access to specialized analytical techniques such as Moessbauer spectroscopy and electron microscopy, coupled to wet chemical dissolution methods. Greater access to these types of instrument is leading to an explosion of experimental data. However, the ability to efficiently analyse this rapidly burgeoning mountain of data, and its subsequent interpretation remains an unresolved issue. To overcome this barrier and spearhead the transformation of data analysis for environmental science, I will create a new platform for analysing Moessbauer spectroscopy data online. This will contrast with the traditional approach by enabling access to continuously updated databases containing both analysed and unanalysed datasets. Through a combination of supervised and unsupervised tools, the complexity of complex environmental samples can be simplified. The long-term aim is to expand into a range of analytical methods which suit the requirements of many different research fields including (bio)geochemistry, geophysics, paleomagnetism, geomicrobiology, and astrobiology amongst countless others. With the system designed to work entirely within a web browser, it can run on any relatively basic computer or smartphone with access to a low bandwidth internet connection. This will open up the accessibility of environmental science to a much broader global community without the need to invest in specialist expertise or costly equipment and software. This platform also offers an opportunity to change how we look at data, minimising the uncertainty and helping to flatten the learning curve for subsequent generations of scientists.Overall, the work described in this UKRI FLF proposal is highly innovative and multidisciplinary, combining environmental mineralogy, geochemistry and geomicrobiology, with computational methods for data analysis to open a new and exciting branch of environmental science. The successful delivery of this project will have a major impact in terms of deepening our fundamental understanding of microbe mineral interactions, and the use of natural resources to overcome energy storage demands. This work will also have wide reaching implications from how bacteria produce or sequester greenhouse gases, to water quality, and the release of toxic metals and metalloids into aquifers, soils and sediments.