Biomining rare-earth elements to upgrade unconventional ores for electricity technologies 

To enable low-carbon energy, there is a well-established need to secure the supply of critical rare-earth elements (REEs) for more sustainable electricity production. Paradoxically, theextraction and purification of these elements can have significant carbon footprints of their own. 

This project proposes to enrich REEs using biological systems, which excel at selective recognition, binding, and sorting of different chemical species in complex environments. This solution leverages a newly discovered REE-binding protein called lanmodulin (LanM), which recognizes and binds to lanthanides at less than 1 ppb concentrations to regulate lanthanide concentrations in bacteria.