Editing Openai/69105bd2-bf28-8005-be64-eadfadc9f430 (section)

===== While there isn’t a bacterium known to excrete visible silver nuggets the way Cupriavidus metallidurans does with gold, several microbes can reduce silver ions (Ag⁺) to elemental silver (Ag⁰) — essentially creating silver nanoparticles inside or around themselves. =====

Some examples:
'' ''Pseudomonas stutzeri* AG259 – This bacterium was isolated from a silver mine in the 1980s. It can survive extremely high silver concentrations and forms silver crystals and nanoparticles inside its cells.
'' ''Bacillus subtilis'' and ''E. coli* – Both can reduce silver ions when exposed to silver nitrate, producing tiny silver particles on their surfaces.
'' Fungi like ''Fusarium oxysporum* – Also capable of producing silver nanoparticles through a natural chemical reduction process.

So technically, yes — some microbes make silver, just not in solid “nugget” form like the gold-pooping bacteria. Instead, they tend to produce silver dust, flakes, or nanoparticles as a byproduct of detoxifying their environment.

It’s part of the same remarkable phenomenon scientists call biomineralization — living organisms generating minerals as part of their life processes.

Would you like me to show you a list of the top known “metal-transforming” microbes and what elements each one can process (gold, silver, uranium, etc.)? It’s a fascinating table.