1 Biogeomagnetism Group, Paleomagnetism and Geochronology Laboratory, Key Laboratory of Earth and Planetary Physics, Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China 2 France-China Bio-Mineralization and Nano-Structures Laboratory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China 3 Institut de Minéralogie, de Physique des Matériaux et de Cosmochimie, Université Pierre...

microbial calcium carbonate, by bridging sand particles, can play an important role in sand dune stability. a study was carried out on the cementation of sand grains and infilling of pore spaces by caco3. two bacterial species (sporosarcina pasteurii and sporosarcina ureae), three reactant concentrations (0.5, 1 and 1.5m), and six reaction times (12, 24, 48, 96, 192 and 288 hours) were tested i...

Biomineralization utilizes biological systems to synthesize functional inorganic materials for application in diverse fields. In the current work, we enable biomineralization of quantum confined PbS and PbS–CdS core–shell nanocrystals and demonstrate their application in quantum dot sensitized solar cells (QDSSCs). An engineered strain of Stenotrophomonas maltophilia is utilized to generate a c...

Biomineralization represents a sophisticated process of forming a highly hierarchically ordered mineral structure by a living organism. The process is carried out under strict biological control of specially designed biomacromolecules. Mineralization mechanisms permitting such sophistication control typically involve interaction between an inorganic mineral and an organic matrix interface. A cl...

The microbiologic reduction of a 0.2 to 2.0 mm size fraction of an Atlantic coastal plain sediment (Eatontown) was investigated using a dissimilatory Fe(III)-reducing bacterium (Shewanella putrefaciens, strain CN32) to evaluate mineralogic controls on the rate and extent of Fe(III) reduction and the resulting distribution of biogenic Fe(II). Mössbauer spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction (XRD) we...

Myxococcus xanthus is a Gram negative, non-pathogenic, common soil bacterium that belongs to the δsubdivision of the Proteobacteria. According to the data, it is demonstrated that, depending on the chemistry of the culture media, M. xanthus is able to induce the formation of phosphates (struvite, schertelite, newberyite), carbonates (calcite, Mg-calcite, vaterite) and sulfates (barite, taylorit...

The Dutch ethologist Niko Tinbergen famously distinguished between proximal and ultimate explanations in biology. Proximally, biologists seek a mechanistic understanding of how organisms function; most of this volume addresses the molecular and physiological bases of biomineralization. But while much of biology might be viewed as a particularly interesting form of chemistry, it is more than tha...