Anne Dekas News

The sea floor off the coast of , , is home to a diverse assemblage of microbes that scavenge methane from cold deep-sea vents. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have developed a technique to directly capture these cells, lending insight into the diverse symbiotic partnerships that evolved among different species in an extreme environment. The community's interconnected metabolism sheds light on how the anaerobic microbes, which consume nearly 80 percent of the methane leaked from marine sediments, limit oceanic emissions of this potent greenhouse gas. Metagenomic analysis, in which the genetic material of all microorganisms swept from their homes in a sample is sequenced wholesale, yields a plenitude of general information.