homehome Home chatchat Notifications


This Bizarre Bacterium Conducts Electricity Like a Wire

Conducting electricity as a lifestyle.

Mihai Andrei
May 7, 2025 @ 11:10 pm

share Share

In the sticky gray mud of Oregon’s Yaquina Bay there lives a creature that doesn’t swim, doesn’t photosynthesize, and doesn’t prey. Instead, it does something far stranger. It’s very conductive.

We’re not talking in a metaphorical sense. This bacterium quite literally acts like a living wire.

Candidatus Electrothrix yaqonensis is a filamentous, multicellular bacterium that channels electrons across distances previously unheard of in biology, linking chemical reactions like a microscopic power line.

A Microbial Wire in the Mud

Cable bacteria are a peculiar bunch. Unlike most bacteria, which conduct their business within a single cell, cable bacteria operate as long chains of cells — filaments that stretch up to several centimeters through sediment. That’s enormous by microbial standards.

But that’s far from the only weird thing about them.

Down in the darker, oxygen-starved layers of mud, some cells “breathe” sulfide, pulling electrons from it. At the top, just beneath the water, others finish the job by passing those electrons to oxygen. The whole filament acts like a wire, linking deep anaerobic chemistry to surface oxygen reactions.

Cable bacteria in between two layers of sediment
Cable bacteria in between two layers of sediment split apart inside a glass cylinder. Image via Wiki Commons.

This is stunning for two reasons. First of all, it’s a kind of bacterial division of labor powered by a flow of electrons across many cells — not something we usually see outside of advanced multicellular life. Secondly, it’s also unusual for a creature to act like it’s an electrical circuit.

We’ve known about the weird “cable bacteria” for over a decade, but most of them fell into two neat camps: the saltwater Electrothrix and the freshwater Electronema.

Then came YB6. And it didn’t play by those rules.

A Bizarre Cable Club Member

A team of microbiologists led by Anwar Hiralal and Filip Meysman, discovered the species in 2019, nestled in the sediment of Yaquina Bay, Oregon. The area’s tidal flats had been previously known to host electrically active bacteria, but there seemed to be something weird about this particular strain.

So, the researchers decided to grow it in the lab.

They used a method called clonal enrichment, which is painstaking and involves repeated transfers in sterilized sediment to encourage a single strain to develop. They first isolated a pure culture (just one strain) and cultivated it over 14 months.

It paid off. The team managed to extract a fully closed genome and characterize the organism from cell shape to electron flow. Genetically, YB6 is unique — distinct enough to warrant its own species name. The scientists named it in honor of the Yako’n people, the Indigenous tribe whose ancestral lands include Yaquina Bay.

Yet the more researchers looked into it, the weirder it got.

Under the microscope, its filaments had the telltale outer ridges of cable bacteria. It had conductive fibers that pass electricity, but they were unusually wide — up to three times broader than those of known species. And unlike the straight ridges of its relatives, YB6’s ridges spiraled in a helical twist. Why exactly they looked like this was unclear. So, researchers dug even deeper.

Spectroscopy Comes In

The team turned to Raman spectroscopy — a technique that uses lasers to probe molecular vibrations. They found peaks that matched a unique molecular cofactor called NiBiD, short for nickel bis(dithiolene).

This is no ordinary nickel compound. NiBiD is a cofactor that seems to be unique to cable bacteria. It’s what makes their long-distance electron transport possible in the first place. No other known organism has it. Think of it as nature’s homebrew electrical conductor.

The researchers also measured electric currents by placing YB6 filaments onto gold electrodes. The results were striking: under a mild voltage, YB6 filaments conducted microampere-level currents. That’s not enough to power your phone, but it’s a massive surge of energy at the microbial scale.

When they tested just the extracellular sheaths (the empty tubes the bacteria sometimes form) there was no conductivity. The sheaths were insulated from the main “cable.”

Simply put, this bacterium is genuinely conductive. In the mud, it’s a microscopic power line.

What does this mean?

The discovery of Ca. Electrothrix yaqonensis is, first of all, a remarkable biological curiosity. It’s an example where life evolved complex behaviors like long-distance cellular cooperation without nerves, brains, or limbs. It also hints at just how much microbial diversity we’re still missing. Only a few cable bacteria have been genetically sequenced to date, and this new species suggests their evolutionary tree could be richer than previously thought.

But there’s also the tantalizing possibility of actually using these bacteria in bio-electro-chemical processes. In other words, researchers are wondering whether we could harness their natural ability.

Imagine using biology to grow wires instead of smelting copper. Or tapping bacteria to self-assemble conductive networks underground. Or using bacteria as natural sensors for water quality and pollution. These are just some of the avenues scientists are considering.

For now, YB6 remains one thread in a larger picture of microbial electricity that we’re only now starting to understand. The mud beneath our feet is more wired than we thought. As Meysman and his team showed, if you want to uncover nature’s hidden electricians, sometimes you just have to get your hands dirty.

The study was published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology,

share Share

Science Just Debunked the 'Guns Don’t Kill People' Argument Again. This Time, It's Kids

Guns are the leading cause of death of kids and teens.

It Looks Like a Ruby But This Is Actually the Rarest Kind of Diamond on Earth

One of Earth’s rarest gems finally reveals its secrets at the Smithsonian.

ChatGPT Got Destroyed in Chess by a 1970s Atari Console. But Should You Be Surprised?

ChatGPT’s chess skills falter against a 46-year-old video game in a quirky AI test.

This Self-Assembling Living Worm Tower Might Be the Most Bizarre Escape Machine

The worm tower behaves like a superorganism.

Big Tech Said It Was Impossible to Create an AI Based on Ethically Sourced Data. These Researchers Proved Them Wrong

A massive AI breakthrough built entirely on public domain and open-licensed data

This Is How the Wheel May Have Been Invented 6,000 Years Ago

The wheel may have a more surprising origin story than you'd think.

So, Where Is The Center of the Universe?

About a century ago, scientists were struggling to reconcile what seemed a contradiction in Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Published in 1915, and already widely accepted worldwide by physicists and mathematicians, the theory assumed the universe was static – unchanging, unmoving and immutable. In short, Einstein believed the size and shape of the universe […]

Dehorning Rhinos Looks Brutal But It’s Slashing Poaching Rates by 78 Percent

Removing rhino horns drastically cuts poaching, new study reveals.

A Chemical Found in Acne Medication Might Help Humans Regrow Limbs Like Salamanders

The amphibian blueprint for regeneration may already be written in our own DNA.

Everyone Thought ChatGPT Used 10 Times More Energy Than Google. Turns Out That’s Not True

Sam Altman revealed GPT-4o uses around 0.3 watthours of energy per query.