Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource

The life-sustaining element oxygen can’t do its job alone. Specialized enzymes, containing metallic elements including iron, cause O₂to split into two separate oxygen atoms.  In this form, oxygen can react with other biological molecules. The precise mechanism of oxygen activation by iron complexes has long eluded researchers, in part because the reaction—which proceeds through multiple intermediate stages—happens in mere fractions of a second.

Manganese, one of the most abundant metals in soils and rocks, is important to the health of the environment: As it cycles between manganese-II and nanocrystalline manganese-III/IV oxides, it plays an important role in controlling the cycle and transport of soil nutrients and contaminants.  Yet because the process is kinetically hindered, manganese will not oxidize rapidly in air; manganese needs a catalyst, often bacteria, to spur the process into action.

Attempting to determine and describe the atomic arrangements in an amorphous material is a daunting prospect. A considerable advance has been made in the anomalous X-ray scattering approach to determining these arrangements in materials containing two atomic species.

In the well-known Greek legend the touch of King Midas would convert anything to metallic gold. Recently, a team working at SSRL lead by Professor Jorge Gardea-Torresdey from the University of Texas at El Paso have shown that ordinary alfalfa plants can accumulate very small particles (nanoparticles) of metallic gold (1). The best-known materials that contain nanoparticles of metallic gold are gold colloids. These lack the familiar metallic luster, but show bright colors which range from red, violet or blue, depending upon the size of the nanoparticles (2,3). 

Sulfur is essential for all life, but it plays a particularly central role in the metabolism of many anaerobic microorganisms. Prominent among these are the sulfide-oxidizing bacteria that oxidize sulfide (S2-) to sulfate (SO42-). Many of these organisms can store elemental sulfur (S0) in "globules" for use when food is in short supply (Fig. 1). The chemical nature of the sulfur in these globules has been an enigma since they were first described as far back as 1887 (1); all known forms (or allotropes) of elemental sulfur are solid at room temperature, but globule sulfur has been described as "liquid", and it apparently has a low density – 1.3 compared to 2.1 for the common yellow allotrope α-sulfur.

Sorption reactions on particle surfaces can dramatically affect the speciation, cycling and bioavailability of essential micronutrients (i.e. PO₄^3-, Cu, Zn etc.) and toxic metals and metalloids (i.e. Pb, Hg, Se, As) in soils and aquatic environments. Considerable attention has been focused on understanding metal sorption reactions at a molecular/mechanistic level and the effects of metal concentration, pH, ionic strength, and complexing ligands on the ways in which metal ions bind to the surfaces of common mineral phases such as Fe-, Mn- and Al-(hydr)oxides and clays. However, a significant fraction of mineral surfaces in natural environments are extensively colonized by microbial organisms, which can also be potent sorbents for metals due to the large number of reactive functional groups that decorate the cell walls and outer membranes of bacterial surfaces.