Recently, the XJTU research team led by professor Wang Yunhai from the Environmental Science and Engineering Department in the School of Energy and Power Engineering closely cooperated with professor Hong Liu's research team from Oregon State University and professor Elizabeth S. Heidrich's research team from Newcastle University and, for the first time, combined the MFC-based biosensor's detection to organic substrate with bioinformatic data. From research method selection, model construction, microbial gene and substrates data collection and analysis, AI techniques and predicted feed substrate was used, providing the possibility to improve the specificity of biosensor signals.

The research result was published in Biosensors & Bioelectronics, a leading journal in the biosensor field, under the title Incorporating microbial community data with machine learning techniques to predict feed substrates in microbial fuel cells. XJTU is the institutional affiliation of the first author. Doctoral candidate Cai Wenfang is the first author. The research project was supported by the US National Science Foundation and the National NaturalScience Foundation of China General Program and Joint Research Fund for Overseas Chinese Scholars.