http://www.boston.com/dailynews/233/nation/Microbe_has_Midas_touch_turnin:.shtml

Microbe has Midas touch, turning dissolved gold into tiny deposits of solid gold

By Adam Gorlick, Associated Press, 8/21/2001 03:47

AMHERST, Mass. (AP) Call them the microbes with the Midas touch.

Thriving where most life forms cannot survive, simple microscopic organisms known as extremophiles are performing an astounding feat: turning dissolved gold into solid gold.

University of Massachusetts professor Derek Lovley discovered the microbes' special power while experimenting on the use of a similar microbe to clean up toxic waste. Now he's using extremophiles to explain how some gold ore deposits may have formed.

Extremophiles, so named because they live in extreme conditions such as hot springs and volcanic vents in the ocean, inhale dissolved gold and convert it into solid deposits.

''They use dissolved metals like iron, uranium and gold the same way we use oxygen,'' Lovley said.

The results of Lovley's experiment were published last month in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

The conversion that takes place in the extremophile is a simple process: a dissolved metal is absorbed through an enzyme that coats the microbe, and then is excreted as a solid. The solid particles are tiny, but they can be seen if many of them cluster together.

Lovley says the process isn't efficient enough to interest jewelry makers, since it would take about a million microbes to generate a gram of solid gold dust.

But gold mine owners may want to use the technology to gather traces of the metal that otherwise would be lost in groundwater, Lovley said.

Gold droppings from extremophiles are probably what miners found when they searched for gold in the southeastern United States in the early 1800s, said Frank Chapelle, a research hydrologist for the U.S. Geological Survey in Columbia, S.C.

''They expected to find nuggets of gold,'' he said. ''Instead, they found tiny traces of gold in sediment that was originally on the bottom of the ocean millions of years ago.''

Until Lovley experimented with extremophiles, there was no good explanation for the presence of sedimentary gold in some parts of the country, Chapelle said.

The idea to study how extremophiles process gold came from an experiment on the use of microbes called geobacters to clean up toxic waste sites.

At an Energy Department uranium cleanup site in Gunnison, Colo., Lovley has stimulated the geobacters' growth so they can essentially draw dissolved traces of uranium out of the groundwater. Once the microbes solidify the dissolved metal, the hardened particles can be scooped up and removed, Lovley said.

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-- Anonymous, August 21, 2001

Answers

let me see if I have this right. These microbes sh-t gold?

-- Anonymous, August 21, 2001

Yes, but I didn't think it would be polite for me to say that in the subject line.

-- Anonymous, August 21, 2001

the midas virus. LOL Makes one wonder about that particular story, huh?

-- Anonymous, August 21, 2001