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2023: Offsetting Methane Emissions With Biological Methane Consumption
Post-industrial human activities have led to unprecedented levels of atmospheric methane, a potent greenhouse gas. This has led to a dangerous feedback loop of global warming melting glaciers, which then release long-frozen forms of methane. In nature, methane is primarily produced by microbes, which is balanced by symbiotic microbes which consume methane. This proposal seeks to understand how we may mitigate methane emissions by investigating an enzymatic step that is shared between microbial methane producers and consumers. The researchers aim to gain molecular-level insight into this enzymatic process, in order to deploy microbe-based solutions to mitigate methane emissions.
Investigator: Nozomi Ando, Chemistry and Chemical Biology