Biologically Upcycling Metals

金属供应有限，因此金属稀缺和供应安全已成为世界性问题。我们必须确保我们不会通过优先考虑当前的愿望而不是未来的需要来耗尽重要的资源。为了解决这样的全球挑战，我们需要转向循环、更可持续的经济，在这种经济中，我们更明智地使用我们拥有的资源。循环经济的基本原则之一是废物是一种未使用的原料；通过设计、设计和重新利用废物流，可以设计出适合材料循环的有机和无机成分。在这项研究中，我提议设计和设计细菌，为我们重新利用我们的废物流。我计划使用生物学进步提供的新工具和技术来设计一种能够将废物中的关键金属离子向上循环为高价值纳米粒子的微生物。某些细菌具有还原金属阳离子并形成零价纯金属沉淀的能力，这是它们抵御金属阳离子毒性水平的生存机制的一部分。我将采用合成生物学中使用的模块化方法，以及迭代设计、建造和测试周期，以增强、操作和标准化这些纳米级沉淀物作为高价值产品的生物制造。通过生命周期评估培训，我将确定采用具有高价值资源回收的生物废物处理方法为企业带来的经济效益，并将免费向其他研究人员(学术界和工业界)提供生物质材料，以鼓励用户对该技术的吸引力。

Metals have a finite supply, thus metal scarcity and supply security have become worldwide issues. We have to ensure that we do not drain important resources by prioritizing the desires of the present over the needs of the future. To solve such a global challenge we need to move to a circular, more sustainable economy where we use the resources we have more wisely. One of the founding principles of a circular economy is that waste is an unused feedstock; that organic and inorganic components can be engineered to fit within a materials cycle, by the design, engineering and re-purposing of waste streams. In this fellowship I propose to design and engineer bacteria to repurpose our waste streams for us. I plan to use the new tools and techniques provided by advances in biology to engineer a microbe with the ability to upcycle critical metal ions from waste streams into high value nanoparticles. Certain bacteria have the ability to reduce metal cations and form precipitates of zero-valence, pure metals, as part of their survival mechanism to defend against toxic levels of metal cations. I will adopt the modular approach used in Synthetic Biology alongside iterative design, build and test cycles in order to enhance, manipulate and standardise the biomanufacture of these nanosize precipitates as high value products. With training in life cycle assessment, I will determine the financial benefits for business of adopting biological waste treatment methods with high value resource recovery and I will provide biogenic material to other researchers (academic and industrial) free of charge to encourage user pull for the technology.