It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Researchers have found that a bacterial species stimulates the formation of gold particles in its environment as a way to survive in solutions containing toxic gold ions. The bacterium, Delftia acidovarans, secretes a compound dubbed delftibactin that precipitates gold ions, causing them to clump into nuggets. Canadian researchers, who published their work in Nature Chemical Biology this week (February 3), grew the bacteria in the presence of gold ions and found that gold nanoparticles began accumulating in the solution. They also identified the genes responsible for producing delftibactin and shuttling it outside of the bacterial cells. Frank Reith, an environmental microbiologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia who was not involved in the study, told Nature that the discovery could in the future help clean up toxic gold mine waste water, while recovering more gold from the slurry. “The idea could be to use a bacterium or metabolite to seed these waste-drop piles, leave them standing for years, and see if bigger particles form,” he said.
Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by CrypticSouthpaw
We could not survive without bacteria but this particular topic has been discussed several times.
edit on 2/19/2013 by Phage because: (no reason given)
A group of scientists at McMaster University in Hamilton, On have discovered that Delftia acidovorans can turn toxic water-soluble gold into microscopic nuggets of the solid precious metal. Using biochemical and genome analysis, Nathan Magarvey, a co-author of the study by McMaster’s Michael G. Degroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research (IIDR), discovered a set of genes and a chemical metabolite that were responsible for helping the bacteria create microscopic gold nuggets. The process is part of a defense mechanism that protects the miniscule bacteria from poisonous water-soluble gold. Or, as Magarvey and co. succinctly pointed out in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, “This finding is the first demonstration that a secreted metabolite can protect against toxic gold and cause gold biomineralization,” being the process by which living organisms produce minerals. But what does the discovery mean? For starters, it solves the long-running mystery of why the bacterium is often found on the surface of tiny gold nuggets. More importantly, however, is the IIDR team’s isolation of delftibactin, the molecule that pulls the gold out of the solution. If scientists are able to isolate enough of the molecule, it could play a role in drawing larger amounts of gold out of water. Frank Reith, a microbiologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia, points out that the MacMaster study complemented his team’s work on gold-processing bacteria. Reith noted that the finding opens up the possibility of a bacterium or metabolite that can be used with waste-rock piles to potentially draw out bigger gold particles. But don’t get too excited. Like the rare earth phytomining project that looks to use plants to draw the minerals out of waste-rock, doing the research is just the first tiny step in the gargantuan process of scaling up a potential mining technique like this. Of course that didn’t stop Magarvey from snapping up the intellectual property rights for delfibactin.
Well thats interesting along with the documentary I saw on the fragmentation of the crust North To South in California where Quarts/ Gold leaches up to the surface . Maybe old JP Morgans bunch can get them to make up that 99 tons of gold that they owe Veneseula . They seem to have lost it . That seems to be the case with the NYFederal Reserve and the German gold too.
that this is a new bacteria Delftia acidovarans
Canadian researchers, who published their work in Nature Chemical Biology this week (February 3)
This scenario may sound like a biochemist’s version of a fairy tale, but it’s real and scientists at McMaster University have just described how the process works in a recent article published online in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.