![]() Like the methane-loving bacteria that served as their templates, the improved bacteria will tolerate extremes of pH, temperature and salinity, conditions found in the mine tailings. To purify and collect the REEs within, these slurries of water and crushed rocks will be run through a biofilter containing the modified bacteria, allowing the designer proteins on the surface of the bacteria to selectively bind to the REEs. “Mine tailings are actually waste which still has a lot of useful materials in it,” said Kalyuzhnaya. REEs are relatively abundant in mine tailings, the waste products of some metal ores, such as aluminum. The team will then modify the bacteria to produce the metal-binding proteins on the surface of their cells, said Love. PNNL’s team will identify the genetic determinants of the extremophilic and REE accumulating bacteria, and then characterize their REE uptake. Understanding this process will inform the creation of synthetic designer proteins that bind with high specificity to different types of lanthanides, according to biochemist John Love. In collaboration with the University of California, Berkeley and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), the SDSU researchers plan to reverse engineer the biological processes that allow the bacteria to harvest the metals from the environment. REEs include the many lanthanide elements of the periodic table. “They require rare earth elements to make one of the key enzymatic reactions in their metabolic pathways,” said Kalyuzhnaya. To do this, the researchers will tap into the natural propensity of methane-consuming bacteria living in extreme conditions to capture REEs from the environment. “We are trying to develop a new procedure for recovery which is environmentally friendly and more sustainable,” said biologist and principal investigator Marina Kalyuzhnaya. Now, with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Environmental Microbes as a BioEngineering Resource ( EMBER ) program, San Diego State University researchers are developing advanced extraction methods with the aim of boosting the domestic supply of REEs. But demand continues to rise and because they occur in such low concentrations, traditional methods of extracting REEs can be inefficient, environmentally polluting, and detrimental to the health of workers. These heavy metals occur all around us, albeit in tiny quantities. Rare earth elements (REEs) like lanthanum and neodymium are essential components of modern electronics, from cell phones and solar panels to satellites and electric vehicles.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |