Back flux during anaerobic oxidation of butane supports archaea-mediated alkanogenesis

Song-Can Chen, Sheng Chen, Niculina Musat, Steffen Kümmel, Jiaheng Ji, Marie Braad Lund, Alexis Gilbert, Oliver J. Lechtenfeld, Hans-Hermann Richnow and Florin Musat ()
Additional contact information
Song-Can Chen: University of Vienna
Sheng Chen: Beijing Normal University
Niculina Musat: Aarhus University
Steffen Kümmel: Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ
Jiaheng Ji: Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ
Marie Braad Lund: Aarhus University
Alexis Gilbert: Tokyo Institute of Technology
Oliver J. Lechtenfeld: Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ
Hans-Hermann Richnow: Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ
Florin Musat: Aarhus University

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-15

Abstract: Abstract Microbial formation and oxidation of volatile alkanes in anoxic environments significantly impacts biogeochemical cycles on Earth. The discovery of archaea oxidizing volatile alkanes via deeply branching methyl-coenzyme M reductase variants, dubbed alkyl-CoM reductases (ACR), prompted the hypothesis of archaea-catalysed alkane formation in nature (alkanogenesis). A combination of metabolic modelling, anaerobic physiology assays, and isotope labeling of Candidatus Syntrophoarchaeum archaea catalyzing the anaerobic oxidation of butane (AOB) show a back flux of CO2 to butane, demonstrating reversibility of the entire AOB pathway. Back fluxes correlate with thermodynamics and kinetics of the archaeal catabolic system. AOB reversibility supports a biological formation of butane, and generally of higher volatile alkanes, helping to explain the presence of isotopically light alkanes and deeply branching ACR genes in sedimentary basins isolated from gas reservoirs.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-53932-9 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-024-53932-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-53932-9

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().