Congratulations to Ed and Jerry, whose paper on the electron conducting properties of heme-based bacterial nano-wires was just published in Cell, with significant coverage in the press.
Structure of Microbial Nanowires Reveals Stacked Hemes that Transport Electrons over Micrometers
Fengbin Wang, Yangqi Gu, J. Patrick O’Brien, …, Allon I. Hochbaum, Edward H. Egelman, Nikhil S. Malvankar
2019, Cell 177, 361–369
-Geobacter nanowires are made up of micrometer-long polymerization of cytochrome OmcS
-All hemes are closely stacked (<4–6 A˚ ), providing a continuous path for electron flow
-We show that these are the same filaments that were earlier thought as type IV pili
-This structure explains the molecular basis for electron conduction in protein wires
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190404143747.htm
https://phys.org/news/2019-04-electricity-conducting-bacteria-yield-secret-tiny.html