Microbial electrocatalysis systems (MES) provide a cutting‐edge solution to global problems associated with the environment and energy, but practical applications are hindered by the expensive electrode materials. Although stainless steel (SS) has been proposed as a promising inexpensive candidate, poor cell/SS interaction results in a low performance for MES. Here, a new synthetic biology approach was established for reinforcing the cell/SS interaction. Hybridized curli nanofibers fused with a metal‐binding domain were heterogeneously expressed onto the cell surface, which realized efficient cell binding with the SS electrode. Consequently, it enabled a ~420‐fold improvement of the anodic power output and a substantial enhancement of the cathodic Coulombic efficiency (from 0.6 to 4% to over 80%) with an SS electrode. This work demonstrates low‐cost MES with an SS electrode and introduces a new avenue to engineer the cell/electrode interaction, which is promising for future practical applications of MES.

中文翻译：

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合成curli利用不锈钢电极实现有效的微生物电催化

微生物电催化系统（MES）为解决与环境和能源有关的全球性问题提供了最先进的解决方案，但是昂贵的电极材料阻碍了实际应用。尽管已经提出不锈钢（SS）作为有前途的廉价候选物，但不良的电池/ SS相互作用导致MES的性能低下。在这里，建立了一种新的合成生物学方法来增强细胞/ SS的相互作用。融合了金属结合域的杂交卷曲纳米纤维在细胞表面异质表达，从而实现了与SS电极的有效细胞结合。因此，使用SS电极可以使阳极输出功率提高约420倍，并大大提高阴极库仑效率（从0.6％到4％到80％以上）。