Weekly Topic: Ideal Environment

Join us weekly to read and learn about Delftia topics!

As a way to spark conversation and initiate discovery, we present weekly questions about Delftia and its many characteristics and abilities! We hope to explore the unknown about this mysterious bacteria and will be using these questions to guide our conversations about the literature. If you haven’t annotated with Hypothes.is before, check our guide to get started here.


This week, we are going to continue reading about the gold-associated peptide delftibactin. Our focus will be on how environmental conditions impact gold biomineralization. To develop feasible, efficient applications for gold biomineralization, it’s imperative to understand ideal environmental conditions for biomolecule production and function. 

The environment is crucial for dictating organism health and biomolecule production. Delftibactin is a secondary metabolite, meaning it isn’t required for survival but does provide an advantage, especially when Delftia encounters toxic gold. What environmental conditions allow for maximum delftibactin production, without overstressing the organism?

 

Delftia is uncomfortable when too hot or cold, but happy at the right temperature.
For example, if the temperature is too high or low, bacterial health and functions can be affected.

 

Delftibactin function is also directly impacted by environmental conditions. Temperature and pH can affect the structure and function of biomolecules. Other molecules can change the function, or compete for the active site that binds gold. What are the ideal environmental conditions for delftibactin function? Use the tag ideal environment this week on your annotations!


Start your readings with these suggested articles. Check back next week to see what we discovered about Delftia‘s ideal environment!

  1. Funari et al. 2019 compares gold biomineralization in different types of liquid mediums
  2. Das et al. 2017 investigates ideal pH for gold biomineralization (alt link)
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