From the Article

>Engineers at the University of California, Irvine said microbes could help colonize the Moon and Mars. Inspired by the cyanobacteria that acquire nutrients from rocks in Chile’s Atacama Desert, they also see the findings as a step toward employing microorganisms in large-scale 3D printing or additive manufacturing at a scale suitable for civil engineering in challenging locations such as the Moon and Mars.
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>As mentioned by the university, high-resolution electron microscopy and cutting-edge spectroscopic imaging methods were used by researchers from the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering at UC Irvine and Johns Hopkins University to gain a thorough understanding of how microorganisms modify both naturally occurring minerals and artificial nanoceramics.

Iirc, there are actually plants which specifically pick up certain metals from soil to such a degree that the processed plant material can be used for refining. If we really went down the route of bioengineering we could probably "create" (or modify) a form of cytobacteria with the genes to process the target minerals into an "organic ore" which can be processed into usable material.

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305:

From the Article

>Engineers at the University of California, Irvine said microbes could help colonize the Moon and Mars. Inspired by the cyanobacteria that acquire nutrients from rocks in Chile’s Atacama Desert, they also see the findings as a step toward employing microorganisms in large-scale 3D printing or additive manufacturing at a scale suitable for civil engineering in challenging locations such as the Moon and Mars.
>
>As mentioned by the university, high-resolution electron microscopy and cutting-edge spectroscopic imaging methods were used by researchers from the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering at UC Irvine and Johns Hopkins University to gain a thorough understanding of how microorganisms modify both naturally occurring minerals and artificial nanoceramics.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/zuz2k6/microbial_mining_could_help_colonize_moon_and/j1m1uck/

I'm a globalist; not a nationist. I'm not feeling xenophobia for imaginary Luna colonies but I just don't want people to be thinking murder this earth ecosystem and leave it is an option.

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And yet sadly the people in charge are going to end up making that the only option.

There's got to be a way to organize peaceful revolution. End this hateful republic; start a true democracy.

Its not an option and it never has been and never will be. It's human grandeur to believe we can destroy life on Earth - it will become uninhabitable for humans far before we have the chance to do that.

I just hope I don't ever see a nuclear war. The fact that a handful of madmen could very possibly destroy the planet gives me anxiety.

a nuclear war would not really destroy the planet, not any more than cyanobacteria did.

Again - that's human grandeur. Nuclear weapons would end human life on earth, not all life completely. If it helps ease your anxiety, if you ever do see nuclear war it'll be over pretty quickly!

Thanks for mentioning this, definitely going to look into this further if only because the concept of "organic ore" plants sounds awesome to implement in my fantasy world building.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomining
• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1360138598012837

Plants, fungi, and microbes have all been used.

Calm down with your cockroach pride. The end of all human life as a result of the insanity of a handful of tyrants: pretty terrifying possibility.

So like Tiberium from the Command and Conquer series?

That sci-fi levels of cool

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Cytobacteria? Or cyanobacteria?

Cyanobacteria can be cultivated in waste and sea waters and have been engineered to create loads of materials. They've also been cultivated in wastewater to take out excess nitrogen before processing. Other bacteria have been engineered to grab onto precious metals in industrial waste waters. There's a lot of promise but it's just a matter of 1) securing dependable funding, 2) managing organisms with recombinant DNA, and 3) translating lab results into the real world

Not gona lie, my degree is is PoliSci, not Biology or Chemistry, so Im not the best when it comes to accurately using specific terminology. You are absolutely right, I did mean cyanobacteria, thats my bad.

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Personally, my goal is ensure that people much smarter than me have access to the funding they need so that they can properly manage their organisms/experiments and can work towards producing real world results. I may not be the person to figure any of this out, but I will certainly do what I can to support them.

You're awesome, thank you!

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Most politicians distrust science. The general public does not understand science and why these things matter.

I agree that funding needs to be put towards this avenue of science. However, it isnt me who needs to be convinced. Its the public and the corporations that run and lobby everything.

So.... basically "Tiberium"?

More importantly, it can help us transition away from destructive and exploitative forms of mineral extraction here on earth

At some point we’re going to have to decide that we’re done studying a “pristine” Mars and that we want to transform it. Bio-engineered bacteria will be the way. We probably need to take a kitchen sink approach and engineer something that eats iron oxides and spews CO2 or Oxygen. We’ll also need something that eats perchlorate too. And then we just fly drones all around the planet dumping it out. We probably want to drop lots of activates carbon all over the poles to make them warmer.

I’m sure there will be quicker and easier terraforming methods in the future but we’re not there yet and if we never get there, these could at least make Mars less inhospitable.