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Cracking anaerobic bacteria

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Hydrocarbons such as hexadecane have seemed resistant to bacterial decay to methane. Not so, it turns out, but this bacterial hydrocarbon ‘cracking’ process is very slow.

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Figure 1: Natural gas and the chemist.

MANCHESTER CITY ART GALLERIES

Figure 2: Making methane from hexadecane — the interacting team of seven bacteria that ‘cracks’ hexadecane anaerobically to CH4 gas.

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  1. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Wills Memorial Building, Queens Road, Bristol, BS8 1RJ, UK

    John Parkes

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  1. John Parkes
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Correspondence to John Parkes.

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Parkes, J. Cracking anaerobic bacteria. Nature 401, 217–218 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/45686

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