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Nucleation of calcium carbonate on bacterial nanoglobules

¹ Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University (IFM-GEOMAR), 24148 Kiel, Germany, and CNRS-UMR 5125 Laboratoire de Paléoenvironnements et Paléobiosphère, Université Claude-Bernard Lyon I, 69622 Villeurbanne, France
² CNRS-UMR 8502 Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Université Paris Sud, 91405 Orsay, France
³ Geomicrobiology, Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), Stilleweg 2, D-30655 Hannover, Germany
⁴ Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University (IFM-GEOMAR), 24148 Kiel, Germany
⁵ CNRS-UMR 7590 Laboratoire de Minéralogie et Cristallographie de Paris, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, 75015 Paris, France
⁶ CNRS-UMR 5125 Laboratoire de Paléoenvironnements et Paléobiosphère, Université Claude-Bernard Lyon I, 69622 Villeurbanne, France

Nucleation of calcium carbonate on microbial cell material may have been the dominant mode of microbial carbonate formation during most of Earth's history. Current knowledge predicts that nucleation takes place on the cell surface or on extracellular polymeric substances. However, the initial nucleation steps have not been described in detail and the process remains elusive. Here we describe the bacterial nucleation of calcium carbonate at the nanometer scale. In our precipitation experiment with sulfate reducing bacteria (SRB), the bulk of calcium carbonate precipitates on hundreds of individual globules 60– 200 nm in diameter. Globules originate from the SRB cell surface but calcify significantly only when released to the culture medium. Similar globules have been observed, albeit at a much larger scale, in other bacterial precipitation experiments and in many natural microbial carbonates, suggesting that the process we describe could be an important step in microbial calcification.

Key Words: bacteria • nucleation • carbonates • precipitation experiment • electron energy loss spectroscopy • transmission electron microscopy

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