Cupriavidus necator is a versatile microbe that can use various energy and carbon sources, including hydrogen (H₂) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) to produce valuable chemicals, such as bioplastic (PHB). Since various genetic tools have been adapted to C. necator, it can be easily genetically modified, making it highly suitable for biotechnological applications. For respiration, oxygen (O₂) is usually needed because it acts as the final acceptor of electrons that are extracted from H₂ for energy conversion. However, combining H₂ and O₂ in bioprocesses poses safety risks due to the explosive nature of the gas mixture, known as Knallgas. Therefore, an alternative terminal electron acceptor instead of oxygen is required to drive respiration.

Although C. necator does not naturally transfer electrons outside its cell for respiration, researchers in this project successfully enabled it to perform anodic respiration, essentially allowing it to "breathe" through electrical processes, by using chemical mediators to help microbes transfer electrons to an electrode. They studied how toxic these mediators are to living cells and worked on improving electron transfer by producing special proteins in the cell membrane and by identifying proteins likely involved in this process They also engineered a system called SpyTag/SpyCatcher to synthetically link a redox enzyme to an electron carrier, to enhance electron transfer to the chemical mediators and later on to an electrode.

To support these studies, the team developed a novel small-scale tool with eight reaction chambers to investigate how microbes and enzymes interact with electricity and developed four larger electrobioreactors for scaling up experiments. Another microbe, Vibrio natriegens, was found to use one of these mediators in a similar way. These efforts have resulted until now in five published scientific papers.

Moving forward, the researchers plan to use genetically modified strains of C. necator to better understand how mediated electron transfer works, scale up bioreactors using computational models, and optimize the interaction between electrodes, mediators, and microbes. They also aim to apply their findings to other organisms, such as Shewanella oneidensis and Vibrio natriegens. Ultimately, the goal of the project is to gain a deep understanding of how C. necator uses electricity to grow and produce valuable compounds, scale up these processes, and apply the principles of artificial electron transfer to other microbes for broader use in sustainable electrobiotechnology.