In natural environmental settings, (micro)organisms control or mediate processes involving metal mobilisation or precipitation and biomineral formation. Understanding the spatial distribution of specific biominerals, marker molecules or biomarker, or effects of the metabolic activity in the vicinity of the respective organims at the sub-micron-resolution scale affords unprecedented insights into morphology - chemistry relations and contributes to better understanding of geobiological processes and materials.
The session welcomes contributions concerning:
(i) the adsorption/precipitation/fractionation and or redox transformation of metals and radionuclides by microbes and/or their metabolites.
(ii) Life or traces of life in extreme environments and potential adaptation mechanisms indicating how to search for extraterrestrial life.
(iii) novel analytical techniques using compositional imaging techniques, providing a means to spatially resolve hetergenous structures of natural samples (e.g. ToF-SIMS, MALDI-ToF-imaging, confocal Raman imaging, NanoSIMS, µ-XANES, NEXAFS, HIXE, CLSM, cathodoluminescence….)