Chinese scholars and overseas collaborators have made progress in the study of the carbon metabolism function of methanogenic archaea

With funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (approval numbers: 92051108, 91851105, 41802179, 31970066, 3157009, 31970105), the team of researcher Cheng Lei from the Institute of Biogas Science of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and the team of Professor Li Meng from the Institute for Advanced Study of Shenzhen University, Germany Max The team of Professor Gunter Wegener of the Planck Institute of Marine Microbiology has made new progress in the study of archaea degrading long-chain alkanes to produce methane
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The related results were titled "Non-syntrophic methanogenic hydrocarbon degradation by an archaeal species", which was published online on December 22, 2021 in the journal Nature

Methanogenic archaea are the earliest type of prokaryotic microorganisms from the origin of life on earth.
They are the main contributor to global atmospheric methane emissions and are also the key functional microorganisms for the degradation of organic matter in anoxic environment to produce methane (commonly known as biogas fermentation)

The study confirmed that a new type of methanogenic archaea, Ca.
Methanoliparum, can directly oxidize long-chain alkyl hydrocarbons, and through β-oxidation, The Wood-Ljungdahl pathway enters into the methanogenesis metabolism, and does not need to be completed through mutual metabolism (Figure)
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Based on these findings, the study proposes a fifth methane production pathway