March 19, 2025
A new manuscript by Su, Chao, Jiang, Daniel, and Banta describes the electrochemical characterization of the Cyc2 outer membrane protein from Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans immobilized on supported lipid bilayers. The wild type protein is conductive, and site directed mutagenesis was used to knockout predicted iron ion binding sites, which confirms our predicted structural model which uses these two ion binding sites to conduct electrons across the cell membrane to a periplasmic heme group. These results demonstrate how protein engineering and the use of supported lipid bilayers can be used to validate electron transfer mechanisms in cell lines involved in industrial metal biomining. The new results were published in the journal Small.