by Gemma Reguera — In 2001, Kashefi and col­lab­o­ra­tors pub­lished an ar­ti­cle in 'Ap­plied and En­vi­ron­men­tal Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy' re­port­ing the sur­pris­ing find­ing that sev­eral iron-re­duc­ing mi­crobes can use gold as an elec­tron ac­cep­tor for their res­pi­ra­tion. These mi­cro­bial al­chemists in­cluded both mesophilic and ther­mophilic bac­te­ria...