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.
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.
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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,