Our lab recently published a paper in Materials Today Bio that reveals how cyanobacteria can extract minerals from the worlds driest non-polar place, the Atacama desert. An excerpt from an article written by UCI News titled “Microbial miners could help humans colonize the moon and Mars” states:
“Researchers in UCI’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Johns Hopkins University’s Department of Biology used high-resolution electron microscopy and advanced spectroscopic imaging techniques to gain a precise understanding of how microorganisms modify both naturally occurring minerals and synthetically made nanoceramics. A key factor, according to the scientists, is that cyanobacteria produce biofilms that dissolve magnetic iron oxide particles within gypsum rocks, subsequently transforming the magnetite into oxidized hematite.”
This work was the result of an excellent collaboration with Prof. Jocelyne DiRuggiero at Johns Hopkins and the hard work of my former postdoc, Wei Huang and our grad students, Taifeng Wang (UCI) and Cesar Perez-Fernandez (JHU). Special thanks to Dr. Robert Kokoska from ARO for the support!
Read more from the UCI News article and the Materials Today Bio publication!