Bacteria that turns to stone
Bacteria that turns to stone “Daadii ( दादी ) , please tell me a story”, I pleaded with my grandmother for the millionth time and, as always, she obliged with a smile. That night, my daadii recounted the story of Ahilya who, cursed by her husband for infidelity, was turned to stone but was eventually freed by Lord Rama. “Daadi, living beings cannot turn to stone”, I said with the assurance of an all-knowing young scholar with biology lessons to his credit. I thanked her for the story and went to sleep. Imagine my surprise, when years later, I found myself staring through a microscope to investigate a bacterium called Sporosarcina pasteurii (SP) and watching it slowly turn to ‘stone’! This was not a case of my eyes playing tricks on me; rather I was witnessing the process of biomineralization. Biomineralization refers to the process of mineral precipitation due to chemical alteration of the environment induced by the life processes. Many organisms are capable of this phe