J.A. Cotruvo Jr.
The Pennsylvania State University,
United States
Keywords: lanthanides, proteins, biomolecular separations, sustainability, critical materials
Summary:
Biology’s utilization of certain lanthanides (predominantly La, Ce, Pr, and Nd) to catalyze specific enzymatic reactions requires selective mechanisms of uptake into the cell and trafficking within it. Intracellular protein-based chelators play a critical role in distinguishing light rare earths from heavier rare earths. Our recent studies have described several lanthanide-binding proteins involved in this process – including the archetypal biological lanthanide chelators, the lanmodulins, and more recently, landiscernin. In this talk, I will describe the efforts of our group and our collaborators to develop these proteins into scalable technologies for separation of rare earths, with an emphasis on the especially difficult separation of near-adjacent and adjacent lanthanides.