Insights into a microbe that can grow on nitrogen and produce methane

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology successfully cultivated a new microorganism that is able to produce both methane and ammonia by transforming nitrogen

Carbon and nitrogen are  elements of life. One of the organisms that takes up key positions for the cycling of both of them is Meth anothermococcus thermolithotrophicus. There is a complicated microbe behind the complicated name

It lives in the ocean, from the sandy coasts to the deep-sea at temperatures around 65 C. It is possible to turn nitrogen and carbon dioxide into ammonia and methane by using hydrogen

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology have successfully grown the pathogenic Vibrio fischeri under controlled conditions

High temperatures, no oxygen, and keeping an eye on hydrogen and carbon dioxide levels are some of the factors that make it difficult to provide the perfect conditions for this microbe

Once the cultures were set up the scientists were able to investigate the physiology of the microbes in detail. They later on studied how the microbe's metabolism adapted to N2 fixation

thermolithotrophicus, a type of Archaean, uses methanogenesis, a metabolism that arose in the early Earth, to obtain their cellular energy

Compared to humans that use oxygen to transform sugar into carbon dioxide, methanogens obtain only a very limited amount of energy from methanogenesis

They are a bit like bumblebees, which are theoretically too heavy to fly but obviously do so, nevertheless

Despite such energy limitation, these fascinating microbes have even been found to be the prime nitrogen fixers in some environments The enzyme that organisms use to fix nitrogen is called nitrogenase

Most common nitrogenases require Molybdenum to perform the reaction. Molybdenum nitrogenase is well-studied in bacteria living as symbionts in plant roots

Nitrogen fixation, i.e., taking nitrogen from the air, is the main process to add nitrogen into the biological cycle

For industrial fertilizer production this process is carried out via the Haber-Bosch process, which artificially fixes nitrogen to produce ammonia with hydrogen under high temperatures and pressures

Ammonia is produced to the most part of the world’s ammonia, which sustains most of the world’s agriculture

The Haber-Bosch process consumes 2% of the world's energy output and releases up to 1.4% of global carbon emissions. People are looking for more sustainable  to produce ammonia.

the process was used thermolithotrophicus shows that there are  ways to increase the efficiency of ammonia production, and  they can be combined with methane production

The data from this study show that under N2-fixing conditions the methanogens sacrifice their protein production to focus on nitrogen capture, which is a strategy for managing the energy budget

we'll look into the molecular details of the process and the enzymes involved, as well as other parts of the organisms' metabolism

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