Scientists in Germany have found a community of microbes that insist on the ethane penetration from hot deep-sea openings at the bottom of the Gulf of California. They described their results Tuesday in the magazine mBio.
Other microbes can use a variety of organic compounds in energy, but ethane consumption is rare. Most microbes can degrade your preferred food without help, but dividing the two main components of natural gas, methane and ethane, requires cooperation between two different types of microbes, the archaea and the bacteria.
The cooperative coupling is known as a consortium. Because consortium microbes tend to multiply very slowly, studying in the laboratory is difficult. Scientists were surprised to learn that ethane-eating microbes that end up in Guaymas basins are fast breeders that have cells doubled every week.
“The cultures laboratory keeps me pretty busy. But this way we now have enough biomass for extensive analyzes, ”researcher Cedric Hahn, a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, said in a press release. “For example, we were able to identify key intercellular intermediates in ethane degradation. We also introduce the first complete genome of a natural gas-degrading archaea in this study.
The bacteria from the newly discovered consortium are known to be species, but the researchers had never seen Archaea species. You named the species Ethanoperedens thermophilum, meaning “warmth loving ethane eaters.”
“We have found gene sequences from these archaea in many deep-sea chimneys. Now we finally have to understand each other and their function, ”said researcher Katrin Knittle.
Scientists also found that the newly named archaea related food and CO2 emit ethane. Researchers are now working to find out if other consortium pairings can be manipulated to produce ethane instead of methane.
“We are still not ready to understand all of the steps leading to ethane degradation,” said researcher Rafael Laso Pérez. “We are currently investigating how Ethanoperedens can work so efficiently. If we understand his tricks, we could create new culture archaea in the laboratory that could be used to obtain resources that are currently being extracted from the gas. ”
It is possible that consortium pairings could be cultivated in the laboratory to limit carbon emissions from the various sources of pollution.
“That’s a long way to go,” Wegener said. “But we are doing our research. We know one thing for sure: we shouldn’t underestimate the smallest inhabitants of the sea! ”
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