Bioleaching microbial community

Here, we established a copper bioleaching microbial consortium on chalcopyrite and then transferred it to chalcocite to investigate how the community composition shifts due to changes in mineral structure and the absence of mineral-derived Fe. The initial inoculum came from a bioleaching column at a copper heap-leaching system in Cyprus. The solution chemistry was determined and microbial communities characterized by genome-resolved metagenomics after four and eight weeks of cultivation.Due to the challenges of isolating RNA from low pH, transcriptomes of this microbial consortia were sampled from different enrichments from those which the chemical measurements and metagenomes in this study were derived from. The transcriptomes were isolated from laboratory grade chalcopyrite and Phoukassa ore enrichments inoculated with the same microbial consortia inoculum as the chemical and metagenome samples.We conclude that the structure and composition of metal sulfide minerals select for distinct consortia and associated mobile elements, some of which have the potential to impact microbial activity during sulfide ore dissolution.