A team of researchers led by MCB Professor Daniel Portnoy has discovered that many bacteria in the human gut microbiome, such as the species which cause listeriosis and gangrene, produce electricity as part of their metabolic processes.

The research "could tell us a lot about how these bacteria infect us or help us have a healthy gut," said Portnoy, and could also lead to new methods of producing "living batteries" from common microbes.

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Image credit: Caroline Ajo-Franklin, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.