Engineering Synergistic Synthetic Microbial Communities for Biotechnology Applications

The ongoing energy transition towards electrification has led to a surge in metal demand, increasing the risk of environmental impact from spilled toxic metalliferous mining waste. This project aims to contribute to developing novel microbial-based solutions for the remediation and recovery of metals from polluted streams. Several anaerobic microbes have the ability to interact with metals, which in some cases results in their precipitation and allows their recovery. The proposed research seeks to identify and characterize these microbes, elucidate their metal interaction mechanisms, and develop innovative microbial metal remediation and recovery methods.