by Leo Baum­gart — Some heavy met­als share a long his­tory with mi­crobes. Many of the meta­bolic processes that sus­tain life are be­lieved to have orig­i­nated from spon­ta­neous re­ac­tions in­volv­ing met­als present in the early Earth. Our mi­cro­bial an­ces­tors fig­ured out quickly how to use...