January 16, 2015
Shayne Jacopian for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Fish sperm could hold the key to environmentally friendly extraction and recycling of rare earth elements (REEs), a study finds.
Salmon semen—or “milt”—has been successfully used to separate REEs in aqueous solutions. Yoshio Takahashi and a team of researchers at the University of Tokyo were studying the absorption of REEs by bacteria cells when they found that the phosphate site plays an important role in the binding of metal ions, which let them to consider the possibility of DNA (which also has a phosphate site) being used to extract REEs in water.
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