Dissolved minerals ultimately wash into the ocean, where they draw CO₂ from the atmosphere and cool the planet again. While this thermostat is responsible for the temperate climate we enjoy on Earth, the weathering cycle occurs over hundreds of thousands of years.

In search of climate solutions, scientists have asked whether the rock weathering cycle could be sped up, resulting in a number of new companies pursuing enhanced rock weathering (ERW).

By scattering crushed silicate rocks on agricultural surfaces or into water, they aim to pull excess CO₂ out of the atmosphere. Although this strategy is generally safe and environmentally friendly, it is still too slow to affect the global carbon balance or to be economically viable on an industrial scale.

Now, a collaborative research team at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, Harvard Medical School (HMS)'s Department of Systems Biology and the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, led by Wyss Institute Founding Core Faculty member Pamela Silver, Ph.D., and Wyss Institute Associate Faculty member Michael Springer, Ph.D., has engineered a potential solution to this problem.

The research team, spearheaded by first author and chemical engineer Neil Dalvie, Ph.D., genetically engineered Alteromonas macleodii, a widespread marine bacterium, to produce much higher amounts of so-called siderophores, molecules that extract iron from silicate minerals.