Absorbing methane
GLOBAL warming is perhaps the biggest threat the Earth has ever faced. Scientists and environmentalists grappling with ways to avoid the disaster have found a bacterium that eats up methane. The researchers hope the organism could be used to fight global warming by preventing greenhouse gases from reaching the atmosphere. An international team of researchers found the bacteria growing in acidic peat bogs in western Siberia. Plant material decays in the bogs releasing gases such as methane into the atmosphere.
Similar peat bogs in Russia, Canada, the us and northern Europe form the largest source of atmospheric methane in the world. The bacteria, known as Beijerinckia, oxidise methane into carbon dioxide, reducing emissions of the gas by up to 90 per cent from such bogs, said Jizhong Zhou, a molecular biologist from Michigan State University, USA. Because the bacteria naturally regulate methane, scientists are hoping that the organism could lead to a new technique for controlling human-made emissions. Whether bacteria alone can solve the problem of global warming remains to be seen.
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