Bacterial interaction with precious metals

贵金属金、银、铜以离子氧化态{Au(III)、Au(I)、Ag(I)、Cu(II)、Cu(I)}在细菌环境中以游离态存在。了解这些金属和离子的细菌转化将有助于揭示一系列过程，如次生矿物的表生形成和对金属铜表面致病细菌的杀灭。耐金属细菌C.metalliduans似乎通过活跃的生化过程催化金粒子的形成。铜特异因子(Cop)可能参与了这些反应。在拟议的项目中，我们将评估由单个CoP因子催化的金特定反应。通过这样做，我们还将从金的特异反应中了解更多关于这种细菌中铜的解毒作用，因为金在细胞中没有微量营养素功能，主要以Au(I)或金属金的形式存在于周质中。另一方面，利用突变的大肠杆菌菌株作为测试系统来研究CoP因子的生理功能，这将有助于深入了解大肠杆菌与铜(II)、铜(I)和金属铜的相互作用。

The precious metals gold, silver and copper occur in their ionic oxidation states {Au(III), Au(I), Ag(I), Cu(II), Cu(I)} and as free metals in bacterial environments. Understanding bacterial transformations of these metals and ions will shed light on a range of processes such as the supergene formation of secondary minerals and the killing of pathogenic bacteria on metallic copper surfaces. The metal resistant bacterium C. metallidurans seems to catalyze formation of gold particles by active biochemical processes. Copper-specific factors (Cop) may be involved in these reactions. In the proposed project we will evaluate the gold-specific reactions catalyzed by individual Cop factors. By doing so, we will also learn from gold-specific reactions more about copper detoxification in this bacterium, because gold has no micronutrient function in cells and is primarily speciated as Au(I) or metallic gold in the periplasm. On the other hand, mutant strains of E. coli will be used as test systems to study the physiological function of Cop factors, and this will yield insights into the interaction of E. coli with Cu(II), Cu(I) and metallic copper.