Rare-earth elements, also known as lanthanides, are, contrary to what the name suggests, not rare. They are, however, challenging to purify from the environment. Only in the past few years, it became evident that life has found solutions to harness these elements for itself. In a recent paper, the Vorholt lab describes the discovery of lanpepsy, a protein which specifically binds lanthanides and discriminates them from other elements.
Click here for original story, Lanpepsy is a novel protein that binds lanthanides with high specificity
Source: Phys.org