I think as heterotrophs, we eat protein, so we tend to think of it in our list of foods, but I think autotrophic bacteria, being on the opposite extreme of the environmental cycles from us, deal with things like ammonia and minerals... however, its interesting biochemically to think about whether perhaps metal ions or various mineral ions might be expressed at the edges of proteins and serve to supply autotrophic bacteria in some way.
Even in the deepest of detailed scientific literature (in fact, especially there!) one can see our vast ignorance as humans of what really goes on except for the tiny inroads we've made in areas like our own human health-related or need-related areas (and even in those of course we struggle on, much more knowledgeable than we were centuries ago but greatly ignorant still of things we will know in decades and centuries coming up if all goes well.
I was blown away, reading the Hovanec articles, by the extreme difficulty in just even *identifying* our two species of autotrophs, let alone understanding how they reproduce or what their biofilms are like or anything even remotely approaching any understanding of the biochemical interactions they would typically have with their environment. And on top of that its mind-blowing how difficult even the simplest communication of some simple fact is when broadcasting it out to the world.. I mean, here was a guy spending thousands or hundreds of thousands in a lab and -telling- us (if I remember this right, lol) that it -wasn't- Nitrobacter, that is was Nitrospira, and years later, as far as I can tell, the majority of sources still get it dead wrong! What does this say about communication??
~~waterdrop~~
maybe its when I drink the coffee before eating the cereal, is that it MW/BI?