Bioprospecting for sustainable mineral management

This project investigates the potential to use microorganisms to access these metals and help meet the supply demands of society.
To do this we need to find bacteria and fungi that already have the ability to survive in metal-rich environments and which are able to mobilise the metals, so that we can then concentrate the metals and use them.
The place to look is the very mine waste sites where the metals are present. Microbes at these sites have evolved in metal-rich environments and exploit the energy released during reactions involving the metals for growth. Once I have characterised the microbial populations I will carry out laboratory-based experiments to determine which of the microbes present at these sites can be used to process and concentrate the metals present in the wastes into an accessible and concentrated form suitable for down-stream technological application.