From The Oilfield to The Lab: How A Special Microbe Turns Oil into Gases
Published:04 Jan.2022 Source:Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology
Microorganisms can convert oil into natural gas, i.e. methane. Until recently, it was thought that this conversion was only possible through the cooperation of different organisms. In 2019, a researcher suggested that a special archaeon can do this all by itself, as indicated by their genome analyses.
Now, researchers have succeeded in cultivating this 'miracle microbe' in the laboratory. This enabled them to describe exactly how the microbe achieves the transformation. They also discovered that it prefers to eat rather bulky chunks of food.