Copper mining is a pillar of the Chilean economy. However, this industry pollutes the environment heavily. Therefore, bioleaching, a method that uses microbes to catalyze metal recovery, is becoming a cleaner alternative for metal recovery. The procedure still remains quite empirical, hampering copper exploitation in heap reactors. The lack of in situ control of the process is largely due to our limited understanding of the biology, ecology and dynamics of the consortia of extreme acidophiles acting as catalysts. For this reason our group uses cutting edge technologies and a powerful combination of computational and functional genomics as well as basic biochemistry and molecular biology tools to advance the understanding of the dynamics and the interactions between all players (bacteria, archaea, viruses) present in the bioleaching and extreme acidic econiches. Through our research we aim to uncover critical metabolic control points that may affect mineral recovery and contribute to the general knowledge of extremophiles.