Chunqiao Xiao
Chunli Zheng
Yanfei Zhang
Huan He
Sadia Ilyas- 1School of Environmental Ecology and Biological Engineering, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan, China
- 2School of Energy and Environment, Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology, Baotou, China
- 3Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tianjin, China
- 4School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, China
- 5Department of Earth Resources and Environmental Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Editorial on the Research Topic
Application of microbial technology in ecological remediation of mines
Mining is the upstream activity to the mineral processing, energy exploitation, and metallurgical extraction of desired metals for the production of materials and energy, which is essential for human beings (Chen et al., 2020; Sonter et al., 2020). The continuous development of mining industries generates a large number of wastes which can cause the pollution of soil, groundwater, and air, and lead to serious hazards for various ecological systems (Balabanova et al., 2012; Heo et al., 2016; Jiang et al., 2021). Prolonged exposure to the contaminated mine sites is harmful to human health and could cause multiple retardations (Kang et al., 2016). The rehabilitation of mined land is therefore an imminent environmental issue. Compared to traditional physio-chemical remediation techniques, such as adsorption, ion exchange, precipitation, coagulation, solvent extraction, electrokinetic, etc., microbial treatment has gradually gained more attentions due to the advantages of low-cost and high environmentally friendliness (Jiang et al., 2011; Coban et al., 2022). Henceforth, mine remediation using microorganisms has been vastly studied over recent decade for remediation and ecological systems restoration at various mine sites.
The mechanistic approaches for remediation of mine sides varied greatly with variable microbial communities and contaminants (Matias et al., 2009), and many issues remain unresolved in field application. Given the knowledge gaps in the aforementioned contexts, a comprehensive understanding on an appropriate bioremediation approach is an absolute necessity. Therefore, the current Research Topic on the “Application of microbial technology in ecological remediation of mines” provides an overview to fulfill the knowledge gap in scenario of rehabilitation of effected mine sites. This Research Topic comprises five articles on various aspects albeit dealing with the ecological remediation of mines.
Liu et al. conducted a study on the bioremediation of waste drill cuttings-WDCs that comprise of rock cuttings (80%) and drilling muds (20%) using the bioaugmentation and phytoremediation techniques. They concluded that greenhouse incubated WDCs (over 120 days) with and without black locust plant (Robinia pseudoacacia) bacterial and fungal consortia in a combination mode could enhance the contaminant removal efficiency compared to natural attenuations.
Cockell et al. investigated the possibility of accomplishment of biological mining under extra-terrestrial gravitational conditions in ESA BioRock experiments. They demonstrated the potential use of microorganisms for mining activities and bio-industrial practices, in space locations, with non−1×g gravity. They have stated that same fundamentals are applicable to extra-terrestrial bioremediations and elemental recycling beyond the Earth.
The heavy metals polluted soil (from Xikuangshan in Lengshuijiang, Hunan Province, China) that particularly contains the highly toxic antimony and cadmium has been treated by Di et al.. The authors screened out a cadmium and antimony tolerant fungus namely, Curvularia coatesiae XK8 from a metallurgical waste (slag) that showed good potential as a biosorbent material to remediate the soil with a removal rate of 67.5%.
Ammoniacal-nitrogen contamination is an obstacle for sustainable development of rare earths industries. Hu et al. isolated Pseudomonas mosselii K17 (nitrifying-denitrifying, heterotrophic bacteria) from elution-deposited resources of rare earths located in Longnan county site of China. The strain, with an efficacy of about 95%, was capable to treat residual ammoniacal solution after leaching of rare earths.
Revegetation is an imperative indicator for restoration of ecosystems of mining area. In this context, Chang et al. observed the difference in key microbial clusters, their molecular ecological network, and their interactions under various vegetation restoration models and demonstrated the correlation of diverse vegetation restorations with microbial community diversities. Current work helps to effectively understand about natural restoration of ecosystems for ecologically damaged mining sites.
We hope that current collection of Research Topic on microbial remediation of the mining legacy will be useful for researchers of relevant domain.
Author contributions
All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.
Funding
Research Topic editors acknowledge support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52174256) to CX, Tianjin Synthetic Biotechnology Innovation Capacity Improvement Project (No. TSBICIP-CXRC-013) to YZ, and the Key Research Development Program of in Modern Agriculture (No. KC21137) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 42172187) to HH.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher's note
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References
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Chen, J., Mo, L., Zhang, Z. C., Nan, J., Xu, D. L., Chao, L. M., et al. (2020). Evaluation of the ecological restoration of a coal mine dump by exploring the characteristics of microbial communities. Appl. Soil Ecol. 147, 103430. doi: 10.1016/j.apsoil.2019.103430
Coban, O., De Deyn, G. B., and van der Ploeg, M. (2022). Soil microbiota as game-changers in restoration of degraded lands. Science 375, abe0725. doi: 10.1126/science.abe0725
Heo, J. H., Chung, Y., and Park, J. H. (2016). Recovery of iron and removal of hazardous elements from waste copper slag via a novel aluminothermic smelting reduction (ASR) process. J. Clean Prod. 137, 777–787. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.07.154
Jiang, W., Tao, T., and Liao, Z. M. (2011). Removal of heavy metal from contaminated soil with chelating agents. Open J. Soil Sci. 1, 70–76. doi: 10.4236/ojss.2011.12010
Jiang, X. W., Liu, W. H., Xu, H., Cui, X. J., Li, J. F., Chen, J. R., et al. (2021). Characterizations of heavy metal contamination, microbial community, and resistance genes in a tailing of the largest copper mine in China. Environ. Pollut. 280, 116947. doi: 10.1016/j.envpol.2021.116947
Kang, C. H., Shin, Y. J., Anbu, P., Nam, I. H., and So, J. S. (2016). Biosequestration of copper by bacteria isolated from an abandoned mine by using microbially induced calcite precipitation. J. Gen. Appl. Microbiol. 62, 206–212. doi: 10.2323/jgam.2016.03.001
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Keywords: mining wastes, bioremediation, green technology, rehabilitation of mine sites, ecological remediation
Citation: Xiao C, Zheng C, Zhang Y, He H and Ilyas S (2023) Editorial: Application of microbial technology in ecological remediation of mines. Front. Microbiol. 14:1136851. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1136851
Received: 03 January 2023; Accepted: 31 January 2023;
Published: 13 February 2023.
Edited and reviewed by: William James Hickey, University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States
Copyright © 2023 Xiao, Zheng, Zhang, He and Ilyas. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Chunqiao Xiao, 
chunqiao@wit.edu.cn