Soil contains a massive diversity of microbial species undergoing continued interactions with their environment including both abiotic and biotic. These microbes are the driving force behind soil health and are major drivers of nutrient cycling. Getting down and dirty with these microbes is producing many promising applications and highlighting the relevance of environmental microbiology to modern living.

Electric microbes are gaining much interest due to their ability to accept and donate electrons to an electrode. Electrodes can be employed to supply electrons directly to or from an environment to overcome electron donor or acceptor deficiencies. The electrodes can stimulate microbial activities useful in soluble metal reduction, organic compound reduction and degradation of chlorinated compounds. But to be truly useful we still require understanding of the parameters of such transfers to enable us to utilize electron flow in engineering microbial communities to remediate contaminated environments.

Synthetic Biology is no offering the opportunity to program these microbes to develop electrical integrated whole cell microbial biosensors for the detection of nefarious substances in real-time. Such microbes can be built to task and take advantage of the huge genetic potential around them. But to gain the most out of our experiences in the mud we have to understand the drivers of these communities, how the microbes interact individually, and how the communities interact as a whole.