“Copper has been demonstrated to kill viruses in less than 4 hours.” Instead, these metals often go through a toxic synthesis process that helps convert them into more usable forms, such as single-atom copper. But the raw metals extracted from these mines are not necessarily ready for their commercial debut the moment it makes it above ground. What’s new - Copper, the same metal that gives a shiny, amber hue to pennies (if only on the outside) is a huge mining business across the world, with some of the largest mines residing in Chile and Peru. When exposed to a copper sulfate media, these copper mine bacteria quickly transformed it into copper atoms usable in applications like medical care and electronics. The findings were published Friday in the journal Science Advances.

“This finding opens new doors for investigations in the biosynthesis of this and other monoatomic metals as a new green chemistry route,” says Rodrigues.

Meaning that microbes burping out rare earth metals used in electronics, like lanthanum, might be just around the corner as well. These microbes may even turn out to be multi-talented, the study’s senior author and professor of civil and environmental engineering, Debora Rodrigues, tells Inverse. This new strain of Bacillus bacteria quite literally eats copper ions for breakfast while creating highly prized and stable single-atom copper in its place, which can be used to create antimicrobial coatings for medical equipment or powering electronics like superconductors, among a multitude of other applications. Buried deep within a copper mine in Brazil, a team of scientists has uncovered a new microorganism that could transform the dangerous way that metals, like copper, are mined around the world.

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