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Published online 14 January 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.25

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Study fails to catch plants making methane

Greenhouse gas emitted from plants might just be passing through.

Quirin Schiermeier

Plants cannot make methane, say researchers seeking to resolve a mystery that has puzzled biologists for several years. Instead, they believe, plants simply take up the gas dissolved in water from the soil, and pass it back out through their leaves.

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  • "If grown in unnaturally high temperatures or strong ultraviolet light, plants do produce small amounts of methane. But Nisbet's team believes that rather than being a result of plant metabolism, this gas is a by-product of the breakdown of cell material" ? so, to what extent does metabolism present and what about an evolutionary element of mutating cell-breackdown processes? Michael Kerjman

    • 15 Jan, 2009
    • Posted by: Michael Kerjman