Impressive: they discovered an enzyme that turns air into electricity

An impressive discovery that could change a generation energy made by a group of Australian scientists from Monarch University. A study published in the journal Nature claims that there is an enzyme that uses a small amount of hydrogen in the air to generate an electric current.

The group’s recent work has shown that many bacteria use atmospheric hydrogen as an energy source in nutrient-poor environments. “We have long known that bacteria can use trace amounts of hydrogen in the air as an energy source to help them grow and survive, including in Antarctic soils, volcanic craters and the deep ocean,” said study co-author Professor Chris Greening. “But we didn’t know how they did it, until now.”

In this article from NatureThe researchers isolated the enzyme responsible for using atmospheric hydrogen from a bacterium called Mycobacterium smegmatis. They showed that this enzyme, called Huc, converts hydrogen gas into electrical current.

The researchers used several state-of-the-art methods to uncover a molecular model for atmospheric hydrogen oxidation. They used advanced microscopy (cryo-EM) to determine its atomic structure and electrical pathways, pushing the boundaries to obtain the clearest enzyme structure reported by this method to date. They also used a technique called electrochemistry to show that the purified enzyme creates electricity at minute concentrations of hydrogen.

The Huc enzyme is a “natural battery” that produces a constant electric current from added air or hydrogen.