All biotic experiments were performed in duplicate.
Biotic experiments demonstrated that CSCN Cu possessed low toxicity and successfully imaged Cu2+ in living cells under the conditions performed.
Finally, recent work has addressed whether reactivity trends are consistent between abiotic and biotic experiments using iron oxide particles of different phase and size.
Comparing water compositions in the abiotic versus biotic experiments (Table 2), the Mg and Ca concentrations were found to decrease significantly more in the biotic systems; indicating a greater amount of carbonate precipitation in the presence of cyanobacteria.
For the biotic experiments, 50 mL of FR inoculum were added to 450 mL of a selective liquid medium called CAsR1; this growth medium had been used previously for growing arsenic-reducing bacteria [19] and the composition is described in Additional File 1.
In the biotic experiments the kinetic parameters values were determined either by fitting to the Contois model the consumed data of HXD emulsified and by considering also the uptake rate of the free forms of HXD as independent of their own concentration.
