New methane organisms discovered

phys.org ^ | October 23, 2015 | by Gene Tyson & Provided by: University of Queensland

[Red Badger]

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Textbooks on methane-metabolising organisms might have to be rewritten after researchers in a University of Queensland-led international project today (23 October) announced the discovery of two new organisms.

Deputy Head of UQ's Australian Centre for Ecogenomics in the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences Associate Professor Gene Tyson said these new organisms played an unknown role in greenhouse gas emissions and consumption.

"We sampled the microorganisms in the water from a deep coal seam aquifer 600m below the earth's surface in the Surat Basin, near Roma, Queensland, and reconstructed genomes of organisms able to perform methane metabolism," Associate Professor Tyson said.

"Traditionally, these type of methane-metabolising organisms occur within a single cluster of microorganisms called Euryarchaeota.

"This makes us wonder how many other types of methane-metabolising microorganisms are out there?"

Dr Tyson's group discovered novel methane metabolising organisms belonging to a group of microorganisms, called the Bathyarchaeota - an evolutionarily diverse group of microorganisms found in a wide range of environments, including deep-ocean and freshwater sediments.

"To use an analogy, the finding is like knowing about black and brown bears, and then coming across a giant panda," Dr Tyson said.

"They have some basic characteristics in common, but in other ways these they are fundamentally different.

"The significance of the research is that it expands our knowledge of diversity of life on Earth and suggests we are missing other organisms involved in carbon cycling and methane production."

The discovery of the novel methane-metabolising microorganisms was made using techniques that sequence DNA on a large scale and assemble these sequences into genomes using advanced computational tools, many of which were developed at The Australian Centre for Ecogenomics over the past 24 months.

The research, titled Methane metabolism in the archaeal phylum Bathyarchaeota revealed by genome-centric metagenomics, was published in Science.

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More information: "Methane metabolism in the archaeal phylum Bathyarchaeota revealed by genome-centric metagenomics." Science 23 October 2015: DOI: 10.1126/science.aac7745

Journal reference: Science search and more info website

[thackney]

I don’t think many that drive to work would be happy with the price of fuel if Saudi would suddenly stop exporting oil forever.

[Rodamala]

What is this “work” thing you say we would be driving to? You mean there is an alternative to a life spent sitting at home and collecting perpetual unemployment?

[Don W]

I accidentally spilt some in my garage 9 years ago (I was converting a couple of old propane tanks into air pigs for the race car).

It took weeks to get the odour out of the house. The concrete still has a bit of the aroma if you get down and sniff it.

[Red Badger]

That was one of the things I was worried about after I had 3 operations on my sinus cavity back in 2008. I couldn’t smell anything! For about six months I had no sense of smell at all. The doctor said I had a 50/50 chance of ever getting it back, and at the end of 6 months it began to return, slowly. Things I could smell were different than before the operations. My brain had to re-wire itself to recognize these ‘new’ smells so that I could know what it was. My favorite after shave and colognes were all ‘different’ than I remembered. At first I thought they had gone stale, so I threw them out and bought new. They smelled the same as the ones I threw away. After about a year I had full sense of smell but the smells were totally different than before. Even bacon smelled different, as did other foods. But now, after 7 years, I can smell almost everything like I used to but have had to adjust to the differences.....................