Geomicrobiology and Biogeochemistry of Precious Metals

Precious metals continue to have economic and sociocultural importance as their usage evolves and diversifies over time. Today the industrial application of precious metals is increasing with the development of scientific and technological innovations. Especially the biological cycling of these metals is receiving more and more attention as the microbiota may be key to a range of issues regarding exploration ore-processing and metallurgy and the processing of electron waste. In this volume we focus on enhancing the fundamental understanding of the biological processes that drive noble metal cycling and examine how this knowledge may be turned into biotechnolical applications.