Researchers at the University of California, Irvine have been motivated to consider new ways that microbes can assist humans in colonising the Moon and Mars by studying the biochemical process by which cyanobacteria absorb nutrients from rocks in Chile's Atacama Desert. … Corresponding author David Kisailus, UCI professor of materials science and engineering [said], "Could humans use a similar biochemical approach to obtain and manipulate the minerals that we find valuable? This project has led us down that pathway." Read More