A new approach to biomining: Bioengineering surfaces for metal recovery from aqueous solutions

Electronics waste production has been fueled by economic growth and the demand for faster, more efficient consumer electronics. The glass and metals in end-of-life electronics components can be reused or recycled; however, conventional extraction methods rely on energy-intensive processes that are inefficient when applied to recycling e-waste that contains mixed materials and small amounts of metals. To make e-waste recycling economically viable and competitive with obtaining raw materials, recovery methods that lower the cost of metal reclamation and minimize environmental impact need to be developed. Microbial surface adsorption can aid in metal recovery with lower costs and energy requirements than traditional metal-extraction approaches. We introduce a novel method for metal recovery by utilizing metal-binding peptides to functionalize fungal mycelia and enhance metal recovery from aqueous solutions such as those found in bioremediation or biomining processes. Using copper-binding as a proof-of-concept, we compared binding parameters between natural motifs and those derived in silico, and found comparable binding affinity and specificity for Cu. We then combined metal-binding peptides with chitin-binding domains to functionalize a mycelium-based filter to enhance metal recovery from a Cu-rich solution. This finding suggests that engineered peptides could be used to functionalize biological surfaces to recover metals of economic interest and allow for metal recovery from metal-rich effluent with a low environmental footprint, at ambient temperatures, and under circumneutral pH.