LAUSR

The lanthanides, together with Sc and Y, make up the group of rare earth elements (REE)essential ingredients sprinkled in a multitude of applications in our daily life. We all rely on the remarkable physical properties of these elements in sustainable and clean energy applications, high tech, and medicine. However, owing to their chemical similarity, separation of REE is extremely tedious and energy intensive. Their mining poses a heavy environmental burden on the surrounding land and population and leads to the consumption of vast amounts of energy. Furthermore, there is an urgent need to use green methods to extract and separate REE from End-of-Life (EoL) products (electronic waste) or aqueous wastes. In this issue of ACS Central Science, Dan Park and co-workers focus on such an ecofriendly method using a natural protein. Recently, the role of lanthanides (Ln) for methylotrophic bacteria has seen an incredible amount of combined research efforts from microbiologists, biochemists, and inorganic chemists.