Microbial Miners

Bacteria play an important role in cycling naturally occurring platinum group metals, scientists show.

Written byCatherine Offord

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Panning for platinum in BrazilUNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE (VIA EUREKALERT)

Platinum group metals—comprising platinum and elements like palladium—are industrially important elements due to their corrosion-resistant, nontoxic, and catalytic properties, but are extremely rare in natural environments. Now, researchers in Australia have shown a new role for bacteria in cycling platinum group metals in soils and sediments, offering a better understanding of how to search for these metals. The findings were published yesterday (March 21) in Nature Geosciences.

“Traditionally it was thought that these platinum group metals only formed under high pressure and temperature systems deep underground, and that when they were brought to the surface through weathering and uplift, they just sat there and nothing further happened to them,” study coauthor Frank Reith of the University of Adelaide said in a statement. “We’ve shown that ...

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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