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Methane oxidation by anaerobic archaea for conversion to liquid fuels

  • Bioenergy/Biofuels/Biochemicals
  • Published:
Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology

Abstract

Given the recent increases in natural gas reserves and associated drawbacks of current gas-to-liquids technologies, the development of a bioconversion process to directly convert methane to liquid fuels would generate considerable industrial interest. Several clades of anaerobic methanotrophic archaea (ANME) are capable of performing anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM). AOM carried out by ANME offers carbon efficiency advantages over aerobic oxidation by conserving the entire carbon flux without losing one out of three carbon atoms to carbon dioxide. This review highlights the recent advances in understanding the key enzymes involved in AOM (i.e., methyl-coenzyme M reductase), the ecological niches of a number of ANME, the putative metabolic pathways for AOM, and the syntrophic consortia that they typically form.

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Acknowledgments

Supported by funding from The Advanced Research Projects Agnecy-Energy (ARPA-E), U S Department of Energy to Drs. Costas D. Maranas, Thomas K. Wood, and James G. Ferry, grant DE-AR0000431.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Thomas J. Mueller, Matthew J. Grisewood, Hadi Nazem-Bokaee, Saratram Gopalakrishnan, Thomas K. Wood & Costas D. Maranas

  2. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    James G. Ferry & Thomas K. Wood

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  1. Thomas J. Mueller
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  2. Matthew J. Grisewood
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  3. Hadi Nazem-Bokaee
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  4. Saratram Gopalakrishnan
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  6. Thomas K. Wood
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  7. Costas D. Maranas
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Correspondence to Costas D. Maranas.

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Special Issue: Metabolic Engineering.

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Mueller, T.J., Grisewood, M.J., Nazem-Bokaee, H. et al. Methane oxidation by anaerobic archaea for conversion to liquid fuels. J Ind Microbiol Biotechnol 42, 391–401 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-014-1548-7

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