Researchers at the University of California, Irvine have been motivated to consider new ways that reveals microbes can assist humans in colonising the Moon and Mars by studying the biochemical process by which cyanobacteria absorb nutrients from rocks in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Researchers in UCI’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Johns Hopkins University’s Department of Biology used high-resolution electron microscopy and advanced spectroscopic imaging techniques to gain a precise understanding of how microorganisms modify both naturally occurring minerals and synthetically made nanoceramics.

A key factor, according to the scientists, is that cyanobacteria produce biofilms that dissolve magnetic iron oxide particles within gypsum rocks, subsequently transforming the magnetite into oxidized hematite.

The team’s findings, which are the subject of a paper published recently in the journal Materials Today Bio, could provide a pathway for new biomimetic mining methods. The authors also said they see the results as a step toward using microorganisms in large-scale 3D printing or additive manufacturing at a scale that’s useful in civil engineering in harsh environments, like those on the moon and Mars.

“Through a biological process that has evolved over millions of years, these tiny miners excavate rocks, extracting the minerals that are essential to the physiological functions, such as photosynthesis, that enable their survival,” said corresponding author David Kisailus, UCI professor of materials science and engineering. “Could humans use a similar biochemical approach to obtain and manipulate the minerals that we find valuable? This project has led us down that pathway.”

The Atacama Desert is one of the driest and most inhospitable places on Earth, but Chroococcidiopsis, a cyanobacterium found in gypsum samples collected there by the Johns Hopkins team, has developed “the most amazing adaptations to survive its rocky habitat,” said co-author Jocelyne DiRuggiero, associate professor of biology at the Baltimore university.”

Some of those traits include producing chlorophyll that absorbs far-red photons and the ability to extract water and iron from surrounding minerals,” she added.Using advanced electron microscopes and spectroscopic instruments, the researchers found evidence of the microbes in the gypsum by observing how the very minerals contained within were transformed.

Source: ANI