BOZEMAN, Montana – A team of Montana State University scientists have provided the first experimental evidence identifying two new groups of methane-producing microbes thriving in Yellowstone National Park’s thermal features. The findings from the laboratory of Roland Hatzenpichler were published in the journal Nature.
According to Montana State University, the two scientific papers outline how researchers verified these first examples of methane-producing single-celled organisms (called methanogens) that exist outside of the lineage Euryarchaeota. Scientists have known about methanogens since the 1930s, but it was believed they all belonged to the Euryarchaeota phylum for decades.
“The methane-producing single-celled organisms are called methanogens. While humans and other animals eat food, breathe oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide to survive, methanogens eat small molecules like carbon dioxide or methanol and exhale methane. Most methanogens are strict anaerobes, meaning they cannot survive in the presence of oxygen.“
Microbes with methanogenesis genes were discovered outside of the Euryarchaeota phylum, but it was unclear whether or not they actually used these genes or if they grew in another manner. Hatzenpichler and his researchers harvested samples from sediments in Yellowstone National Park hot springs (with temperatures from 141 to 161 degrees Fahrenheit).
“Through what Hatzenpichler described as “painstaking work,” MSU doctoral student Anthony Kohtz and postdoctoral researcher Viola Krukenberg grew the Yellowstone microbes in the lab. The microbes not only survived but thrived – and they produced methane. The team then worked to characterize the biology of the new microbes, involving staff scientist Zackary Jay and others at ETH Zurich.
At the same time, a research group led by Lei Cheng from China’s Biogas Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and Diana Sousa from Wageningen University in the Netherlands successfully grew another one of these novel methanogens, a project they had worked on for six years.“
You can heaar Dr. Roland Hatzenpichler discuss the study in the Matters Microbial podcast #43.