Dear Colleagues,

Although biotechnology has recently achieved great advances and opened a new chapter in synthetic biology, there remains a huge productivity gap between chemical and bio-based production. In fact, recent advances in biotechnology have reduced the kinetic barrier through improvements in biocatalytic activity, but not the thermodynamic barrier between substrate and product. There is thus a huge demand for a narrowing of the thermodynamic substrate–product gap in order to overcome this limitation of typical fermentation productivity through regulating the intracellular redox balance. There are several conventional strategies to do so, such as aeration, co-production, and chemical (oxidant/reductant) addition, but these might not be appropriate as solutions to the current problems of productivity. Next-generation microbial redox controllers, such as metals and electrodes, are therefore being sought, which could be game-changers in fermentation because microbe–metal/electrode interaction is (1) bi-directional, (2) controllable, and (3) easily removable from the media.

The goal of this Special Issue is to present recent advances in microbial redox control research using microbe–metal/electrode interactions to improve productivity. We welcome authors’ contributions of not only their experimental results, but also their insights in this field.

Dr. Changman Kim
Guest Editor

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• bioelectrochemical systems
• microbial fuel cells
• microbial redox balance
• microbe–metal interaction
• microbial electrosynthesis
• electro-fermentation