Society for Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology

To cover the growing demand of the world’s population for metals, deposits which compared to the ones used now are more complex, have lower metal contents or lie deeper will have to be mined in the future. To do so in an environmentally acceptable way, geobiotechnology will most likely have to play an important role. This session will show how insights from omics–techniques and from other molecular tools may increase the efficiency of oxidative bioleaching operations. Reductive processes will be presented and the question will be raised, under which conditions in situ-bioleaching may play a future role. In addition, biotechnological approaches to obtain metals from leaching solutions or for mineral enrichment will be issues of the session.

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