Methane, a greenhouse gas with an impact over 20 times greater than CO2, is constantly seeping out of large methane hydrate reservoirs in the ocean floors but 80 percent of it is immediately consumed by syntrophic ("feeding together") microorganisms.
These microorganisms dramatically reduce the oceanic emission of methane into the atmosphere by oxidizing methane anaerobically, providing an important component of the global carbon cycle and a major sink for methane on Earth.
Scientists of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena succeeded in capturing these syntrophic microorganisms, something various international research groups have been working on since 1999.












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