Osmotic response in isolated from an industrial copper bioleaching environment to sulfate.

Iron and sulfur-oxidizing microorganisms play important roles in several natural and industrial processes. () , is an iron-oxidizing microorganism with a remarkable adaptability to thrive in extreme acidic environments, including heap bioleaching processes, acid mine drainage (AMD) and natural acidic water. A strain of (IESL25) was isolated from an industrial bioleaching process in northern Chile.

Validation of Genetic Markers Associated to Oxygen Availability in Low-Grade Copper Bioleaching Systems: An Industrial Application.

Forced aeration is one of the major energy consumption factors of the bioleaching process of run-of-mine ore. The effect of aeration in the microbial community has scarcely been studied at industrial level. is one of the most representative species of the Fe producing population in this kind of systems.

Identification of trehalose as a compatible solute in different species of acidophilic bacteria.

The major industrial heap bioleaching processes are located in desert regions (mainly Chile and Australia) where fresh water is scarce and the use of resources with low water activity becomes an attractive alternative. However, in spite of the importance of the microbial populations involved in these processes, little is known about their response or adaptation to osmotic stress. In order to investigate the response to osmotic stress in these microorganisms, six species of acidophilic bacteria were grown at elevated osmotic strength in liquid media, and the compatible solutes synthesised were identified using ion chromatography and MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry.

Draft genome sequence of CLST isolated from the acidic hypersaline Gorbea salt flat in northern Chile.

10.1601/nm.2199 CLST is an extremely acidophilic gamma-proteobacteria that was isolated from the Gorbea salt flat, an acidic hypersaline environment in northern Chile.

Draft genome sequence of chloride-tolerant Leptospirillum ferriphilum Sp-Cl from industrial bioleaching operations in northern Chile.

Leptospirillum ferriphilum Sp-Cl is a Gram negative, thermotolerant, curved, rod-shaped bacterium, isolated from an industrial bioleaching operation in northern Chile, where chalcocite is the major copper mineral and copper hydroxychloride atacamite is present in variable proportions in the ore. This strain has unique features as compared to the other members of the species, namely resistance to elevated concentrations of chloride, sulfate and metals. Basic microbiological features and genomic properties of this biotechnologically relevant strain are described in this work.

Distribution of prokaryotic genetic diversity in athalassohaline lakes of the Atacama Desert, Northern Chile.

Athalassohaline lakes are inland saline aquatic environments with ionic proportions quite different from the dissolved salts in seawater. Prokaryotes inhabiting athalassohaline environments are poorly known and very few of such places have been surveyed for microbial diversity studies around the world. We analyzed the planktonic bacterial and archaeal assemblages inhabiting several of these evaporitic basins in a remote and vast area in northern Chile by PCR-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) and sequencing of 16S rRNA gene fragments.