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，我们需要开发提取和储存能源的替代方法。一种未被充分利用的方法利用了细菌，这些细菌已经在一种化合物或另一种化合物之间穿梭了数十亿年。尽管这些“微型发电站”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。近年来，已经出现了不同类型的铁呼吸细菌使用铁基生物化学电池（生物电池）的能力。生物地质电池是一种混合价态的铁矿物，含有还原态和氧化态的铁，可以在不发生物理转化的情况下持续充当电子源或电子汇。这种广义的矿物电池的定义可能适用于广泛的矿物相，例如氧化铁、含铁粘土、硫化物或绿色锈。这种矿物在地球上无处不在，可能是地下环境中大部分能量转移的原因。该项目将从根本上了解细菌如何进入生物电池，以便我们能够了解如何释放这种潜力，甚至可能启动用于偏远地区的低成本，低功耗储能设备的发展。这将通过确定混合价铁矿物作为铁电池的基本功能并确定其在环境中的重要性来实现。要了解生物电池在环境中的功能，需要使用专门的分析技术，如穆斯堡尔谱和电子显微镜，再加上湿化学溶解法。更多地使用这些类型的仪器导致实验数据的爆炸。然而，有效分析这一迅速增长的数据山的能力及其随后的解释仍然是一个悬而未决的问题。为了克服这一障碍，引领环境科学数据分析的转型，我将创建一个在线分析穆斯堡尔光谱数据的新平台。这将与传统方法形成对比，因为它使人们能够访问不断更新的数据库，其中既有经过分析的数据集，也有未经分析的数据集。通过监督和非监督工具的组合，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适合许多不同研究领域要求的分析方法，包括（生物）地球化学，地球物理学，古地磁学，地球微生物学和天体生物学等。该系统设计为完全在Web浏览器中工作，它可以在任何相对基本的计算机或智能手机上运行，可以访问低带宽的互联网连接。这将使更广泛的全球社会能够获得环境科学，而无需投资于专业知识或昂贵的设备和软件。该平台还提供了一个改变我们看待数据的方式的机会，最大限度地减少不确定性，并有助于使后代科学家的学习曲线变平。总体而言，UKRI FLF提案中描述的工作具有高度创新性和多学科性，将环境矿物学，地球化学和地质微生物学与数据分析的计算方法相结合，开辟了一个新的令人兴奋的环境科学分支。该项目的成功交付将对加深我们对微生物矿物相互作用的基本理解以及利用自然资源克服储能需求产生重大影响。这项工作也将产生广泛的影响，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.