From ScienceAlert:
These Bacteria Digest Toxic Metals And Poop Out Tiny Gold Nuggets
Handy
No other life form on our planet has infiltrated every environment as successfully as the minuscule single cells of bacteria. Amongst their many roles in life on Earth, it turns out some of these microbes are also experts at purifying precious metals.
An international team of researchers has figured out how one metal-gobbling bacterium, Cupriavidus metallidurans, manages to ingest toxic metallic compounds and still thrive, producing tiny gold nuggets as a side-effect.Just like many other elements, gold can move through what's known as a biogeochemical cycle - being dissolved, shifted around, and eventually re-concentrated in Earth's sediment.Microbes are involved in every step of this process, which has led scientists to wonder how they don't get poisoned by the highly toxic compounds that gold ions usually form in the soil.The rod-shaped C. metallidurans was first found to poop gold nuggets back in 2009, when scientists discovered that it somehow manages to ingest toxic gold compounds and convert them into the element's metallic form without any apparent danger to the organism itself."The results of this study point to their involvement in the active detoxification of gold complexes leading to formation of gold biominerals," lead researcher, geomicrobiologist Frank Reith said in 2009.Now, after years of investigation, Reith and his colleagues finally know the precise mechanism of how the bacterium achieves this amazing feat....MORE
Here's the paper via the Royal Society of Chemistry.
