Biomineralized structures are controlled at the nanoscale but impact the environment on a global scale. Biominerals (e.g. those produced by diatoms, coccolithophores, foraminifera, corals, and mollusks) are massively present in all the world's oceans. Biomineralizing colonies of bacteria occur essentially everywhere. The phenomenon of biomineralization is relevant to the Earth, Environmental and Life Sciences on practically all length scales. From small bacterial communities to the immense scale of reef-systems and global ocean cycles, the impact of biomineralization spans length scales of at least 12 orders of magnitude and a large fraction of geological time. However, despite the global environmental impact and despite the realization that biomineralization processes generally occur at the cellular level, the basic biological mechanisms involved in biomineralization are poorly understood. This lack of understanding has serious implications for a number of applications in Earth science. For example, calcium carbonate biominerals are frequently used as proxies for global-scale paleo-environmental conditions. However, the degree to which biological processes control their chemical and isotopic composition and the precision to which these carbonates record environmental changes is not understood.

We invite a broad range of contributions that investigate biomineralization processes in prokaryotic as well as eukaryotic systems and/or their implications for paleo-environmental reconstructions and geochemical cycles.