Grant: Engage Grants Program

BacTech Environmental Corporation employs the patented BACOX technology that harnesses the abilities ofmicrobial communities for improved bioleaching and metal recovery from discarded mine tailings. BacTechhas a significant interest in improving and optimizing the microbial seed mixtures used in the BACOX processin order to deliver environmental and economic benefits to mine tailings sites across Canada. As BacTech doesnot currently have the capacity to perform this optimization, we are establishing a collaboration to bringacademic expertise to drive the research for significant improvement of the BACOX technology. The first stageof optimization will include a detailed identification of the total microbial communities present (who's there?)in the bioleaching seed mixtures in order to allow for detailed understanding of which microbial species arepresent. The approach will use high-throughput sequencing of the total community DNA to create acommunity (metagenomic) profile for the microbial population. Knowing the identity of individual mix speciesalso provides indication of key microbial features (what are they doing?) important to bioleaching processesincluding metabolic capacity and environmental predisposition. Secondly, we will also initiate isolation,identification, and metabolic characterization of dominant microbial strains from the bioleaching mixturesthrough lab culture. Together, the metagenomic library and strain collection will be applied directly in multiplestages of feasibility testing of potential leach materials including: i) testing the ability of the seed community toleach particular mineralogy, ii) predicting and controlling potential interactions with native tailing microbialcommunities, iii) identifying biomarkers that could be applied for real-time monitoring of the leachingoperations. BacTech is the first company to pioneer bioleaching exclusively for tailings remediation and ispoised to make significant impacts in the bioleaching and remediation of mine tailings within Canada. Thiscollaboration will significantly advance the understanding and optimization of the bioleaching processesthrough genomics and will help drive the success and growth of BacTech's biomining practices.