Decoding carbonate (bio)mineralisation using high-throughput mineralogy

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• Professor Julie Cosmidis, University of Oxford
• Tuesday 18 November 2025, 12:00-13:00
• Department of Earth Sciences, Tilley Lecture Theatre.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Alexandra Turchyn.

Carbonates are a major biomineral type for both Eukaryotes and Prokaryotes, an important sink in the biogeochemical carbon cycle, and the basis for many paleoenvironmental proxies. They are also increasingly used for long-term carbon removal, and as promising materials to replace carbon-intensive products (e.g., biocements for construction). Carbonate crystallisation is influenced by many physicochemical variables (temperature, pH, saturation, etc.) and by inorganic and organic species that can inhibit or promote mineral nucleation and growth, controlling particle abundance as well as mineralogical properties such as morphology, composition, and crystal structure. Microbial cells can also mediate or influence carbonate formation through metabolic activity or the production of organic molecules. While the effects of these factors on carbonate mineralisation have been studied individually, their complex interactions have not been systematically explored. Indeed, our current understanding is mainly based on empirical studies that investigate the effects of these factors in isolation, and whose findings cannot be easily extrapolated to complex natural and engineered systems. To move beyond the state-of-the-art, we have developed a new high-throughput methodology combining in-situ imaging, automated Raman analyses, and Machine Learning. This approach allows us to rapidly perform and characterise hundreds to thousands of miniaturised mineralisation experiments, covering a wide multi-dimensional space of chemical variables and testing the effects of different organic molecules or bacterial strains on carbonate precipitation rates and mineralogical properties. I will present early results from this methodology and explain how it can be used to decode the environmental and genetic controls of microbial biomineralisation.

This talk is part of the Department of Earth Sciences Seminars (downtown) series.

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