The Microbiology of Biomining: Microbial Communities, Consortia and Species Involved in Mineral Processing
A special issue of Minerals (ISSN 2075-163X). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Mineralogy and Biogeochemistry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2024) | Viewed by 12970
Special Issue Editors
Interests: environmental microbiology; extremophilic microorganisms; biomining; bioremediation of heavy metals
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: bioleaching; biosorption; bioremediationof toxic metals; biosynthesis of metallic nanoparticles
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Biomining, traditionally the use of microorganisms for the extraction of metals from sulphide minerals, is undoubtedly a robust, economic, and environmentally friendly alternative to traditional extractive technologies. However, this green biotechnology is facing new challenges as shallow, more accessible deposits are failing and worldwide concern for the accumulation of contaminated wastes, the generation of acid mine drainage that contaminates soils and water bodies even kilometres away and the use of fresh water is increasing, making regulations stricter, to mention only some major issues. This context presents challenges to the scientific community working on biomining at two levels that go hand in hand: one is the need to find and unconventional metal deposits and make them exploitable, and other is associated with the microbial species, being able to work on them, which is the focus of this Special Issue.
Researchers and companies working on biomining are putting forward great effort and resources to find alternative sources for the extraction of metals, including low-grade minerals, abandoned tailing, complex minerals with difficult-to-handle toxic elements such as arsenic, polymetallic mineral deposits in deep surfaces or deep sea that contain rare earth elements or are rich in manganese, or even the alternative of exploring asteroids or planets in outer space. Something similar is happening with the attempt to replace, at least partially, the use of fresh water by sea water in biomining operations. All these changes that traditional biomining is confronting require artificially or naturally adapted microorganisms, not only to tolerate but also to successfully develop under these complex conditions.
Luckily, these challenges are occurring in the era of meta-omics that allows a deep understanding of the structure, interrelation, and metabolic processes of microbial communities and single species at the levels of genetic material, proteins, and other metabolites. On the other hand, bioengineering is finally coming up with strategies to genetically modify acidophiles, expanding the toolbox to make such microbial species more tolerant to the multiple unfavourable conditions found in the metal matrixes that modern bioleaching is experimenting with.
Finally, the exhaustive exploration of extreme environments combined with the application of state-of-the-art technologies from different fields (omics, analytics, cytometry, and microscopy, among others) is allowing us to increase the knowledge of microbial diversity, community structure, and even single rare habitants, which can be used to develop novel alternatives for different biotechnologies, including biomining.
In this Special Issue, we will be dealing with the most recent advances in the characterisation and uses of microbial communities, artificial consortia, and isolated species capable of mineral processing in the described new era of biomining.
Dr. María Sofía Urbieta
Dr. Laura Castro
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- mineral processing
- omics in biomining
- mineral-microbe interactions
- microbial diversity
- microbial consortia
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