Join Chicago Council on Science and Technology and geology Professor Bruce Fouke for a discussion on biomineralization, the process of life controlling mineral growth in the environment, and its modern applications. Sponsored by the Don and Catherine Kleinmuntz Center for Genomics in Business and Society.
The survival of all forms of Life on Earth through geological time has depended on controlling mineral growth within the environments they inhabit. This process, called biomineralization, has been an essential unavoidable, and ubiquitously distributed force of nature that has caused essential strategic benefits (like forming bones for muscle attachment), as well as profound practical problems and impediments (such as the growth of kidney stones).
Ancient peoples around the world have possessed a basic understanding of this interconnectedness of all forms of life within the natural world. However, it was not until Alexander von Humboldt’s 19th Century portrait of nature in Cosmos that Western science earnestly began to recognize biomineralization as an integrative physical, chemical, and biological phenomenon. This presentation will explore the scientific renaissance being driven by newly developed molecular and microscopy tools into the processes of biomineralization. This reframes our basic approaches to the grand challenges that face society regarding the environment, energy, medicine, and space exploration.
