Elusive microbe that consumes ethane found under the sea

Ragsdale, Stephen W.

doi:10.1038/d41586-019-00842-2

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27 March 2019

Elusive microbe that consumes ethane found under the sea

A microorganism that consumes ethane in the absence of environmental oxygen has been discovered. In the depths of the sea, this microbe, which oxidizes ethane, partners with another that reduces sulfate to sulfide.

Stephen W. Ragsdale⁰

Stephen W. Ragsdale
1. Stephen W. Ragsdale is in the Department of Biological Chemistry, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-0606, USA.
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Plumes of natural gas emanate from the bottom of the ocean. These hydrocarbon emissions comprise around 90% methane, with ethane making up most of the rest. Such deep-sea sources are responsible for 5% of the methane, a greenhouse gas, present in Earth’s atmosphere¹. The amount of hydrocarbon released from the deep sea into the atmosphere is substantially reduced by microorganisms that capture and use these gases as their sole source of cellular carbon and energy. Writing in Nature, Chen et al.² describe the culmination of a ten-year scientific mission to identify and characterize the microorganisms and reactions that are responsible for ethane consumption at hydrocarbon seeps in the deep sea.

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Nature 568, 40-41 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-00842-2

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