Biomineralization in Cave Bacteria-Popcorn and Soda Straw Crystal Formations, Morphologies, and Potential Metabolic Pathways.

ABSTRACT: Caves are extreme, often oligotrophic, environments that house diverse groups of microorganisms. Many of these microbes can perform microbiologically induced carbonate precipitation (MICP) to form crystalline secondary cave deposits known as speleothems. The urease family is a group of enzymes involved in MICP that catalyze the breakdown of urea, which is a source of energy, into ammonia and carbonate. Carbonate anions are effluxed to the extracellular surface of the bacterium where it then binds to environmental calcium to form calcium carbonate which then continues to grow in crystal form. Here, we studied bacterial communities from speleothems collected from the Iron Curtain Cave (ICC) in Chilliwack, B.C., Canada, to characterize these organisms and determine whether urease-positive (U+

SUBMITTER: Koning K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9283089 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature