Developing international collaboration and microbiological techniques for producing of functional biominerals

当前技术研究和发展的一个重要领域是寻找纳米级材料，根据定义，纳米级材料的尺寸小于小于100纳米（通常小到1纳米，相当于10亿分之一米）。这一努力背后的推动力是纳米粒子在微型磁性和电子设备、生物医学应用、催化剂、能源生产和环境清理中的应用。有许多细菌在其正常细胞活动中产生纳米粒子（生物纳米物），将电子从有机物传递给金属以产生生长所需的能量。这些活动的结果是固体，如常见的氧化铁，或含有溶解金属的液体，转化成数百万个靠近细菌的纳米颗粒。在我们的研究计划中，我们的目标是利用这些天然的制造商，并在一个尚未开发的具有巨大潜力的领域生产新的“生物纳米材料”。我们的目标是生产和了解生物矿化过程，确定和控制重要的微生物活动，通过环境友好的途径促进生物矿物生产的条件，并生产出比无机材料更好/不同于无机材料的生物纳米材料，用于一系列应用。到目前为止，在我们的工作中，我们已经使用一系列细菌生产了许多这些生物异矿物，并表明我们可以通过改变它们的生长条件，改变来源材料和选择具有特定属性的生物体来控制所生产的矿物的性质。我们还表明，就性能而言，生产的一些颗粒的性能优于用其他方法生产的颗粒。我们目前的研究方案旨在在三个领域生产生物矿物。一组是基于磁铁矿（Fe304）矿物，很容易由许多细菌产生。通过掺杂起始材料（如Ni， Co， V等元素），纳米颗粒的化学性质和形态将发生变化。第二类是用于催化剂的贵金属涂层或磁性支撑，如铂、金、银和钯。第三个研究重点是生产可用于电子和光学设备的纳米颗粒。它们是由细菌产生的，细菌将硒等元素还原成溶解的硒化物，这种硒化物可以用来形成5纳米大小的颗粒，比如CdSe。这些半导体材料是我们熟悉的许多设备（如电视屏幕）的常见成分。最后，我们将研究这些生物纳米矿物在环境清洁中有毒金属和有机物的特性；纳米粒子具有优异的反应性，我们已经证明它可以中和流动的放射性废物和化学废物。在所有这些研究中，我们将使用最先进的技术，包括粒子加速器和分子尺度显微镜来确定我们生产的生物纳米矿物的特性，以便将它们的性能与其他方法形成的纳米颗粒进行比较，这样我们就可以“重新调整”我们的细菌来生产我们想要的颗粒。这项工作的两个主要目标是将有用的颗粒开发成实际的工作设备，并开发批量生产的方法，如果英国工业要从我们的工作中受益，这两个目标都是必不可少的。

One of the great areas of current technological research and development is the search for nano-scale materials which, by definition, are less than less than 100 nanometres in size (and often as small as 1 nanometre, which is equal to 1 billionth of a metre). The driving force behind this effort is the use of nanoparticles in miniaturised magnetic and electronic devices, in biomedical applications, as catalysts, in energy production and in environmental clean-up. There are a number of bacteria that produce nanoparticles (bionanominerals) as part of their normal cellular activities, passing electrons from organic matter to metals to generate energy for growth. The result of these activities is the transformation of solids, such as common iron oxides, or liquids containing dissolved metals, into millions of nanoparticles adjacent to the bacteria. In our research programme we aim to exploit these natural manufacturers and to produce novel 'bionanomaterials' in what is an unexploited area of great potential. We aim to produce and understand the biomineralisation processes, to determine and control the important microbial activities, to promote conditions for biomineral production by environmentally friendly routes and to produce bionanomaterials better/different than/to their inorganic counterparts for a range of applications. In our work so far we have produced a number of these bionanominerals using a range of bacteria, and have shown that we can control the nature of the minerals produced by changing their growth conditions, changing the source materials and selecting the organisms with particular attributes. We have also shown that the properties of some of the particles produced are superior in terms of performance than particles produced in other ways. Our current research programme is aimed at producing bionanominerals in three areas.One group are based on magnetite (Fe304) minerals which are readily produced by a number of bacteria.. The chemistry and morphology of the nanoparticles will be changed by doping the starting materials (with elements such as Ni, Co, V). The second group are precious metal coatings or magnetic supports, such as Pt, Au, Ag and Pd, for use in catalysts. The third research focus is in the production of nanoparticles that can be used in electronic and optical devices. These are produced by bacteria that reduce elements like selenium to dissolved selenide which can be used to form particles five nanometre in size, such as CdSe. These semi-conductor materials are common constituents in many of the devices familiar to us such as TV screens. And finally we will be looking at the properties of these bionanominerals in environmental clean of toxic metals and organics; nanoparticles have excellent reactive properties which we have already shown neutralise mobile radioactive and chemical wastes. In all these investigations we will use state of the art technology including particle accelerators and molecular scale microscopes to determine the properties of the bionanominerals we produced, so that they can be compared in performance to nanoparticles formed by other methods, and so that we can 're-tune' our bacteria to produce the particles we want. Two major aims of the work are to develop the useful particles into actual working devices and to develop methods for bulk production, both essential if the UK Industry is to benefit from our work.