Some of our planet's earliest organisms may have been methanogens — microbes that eat organic molecules and exhale methane gas.
In a study published online on Monday, researchers at the University of California, Irvine, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that as temperatures rise, activity increases among the microbes that eat the topsoil and exhale carbon dioxide afterward.
Ambercycle, however, is developing microbes that eat plastic and produce chemicals that become the building blocks for renewable polyester.
This water typically already has naturally high levels of dissolved CO2, produced by microbes that eat decaying algae and other organic matter and then respire CO2.
Nicola McLoughlin, a post-doctoral student at the University of Bergen, is looking for microbes that eat volcanic glass and may have lived 3.5 billion years ago, the same kinds that are found on the seafloor today on the mid-Atlantic Ridge.
Considering energy transfer in terms of ultimate electron donors and acceptors can facilitate conversations about microbes that "eat" rocks (Newman, 2010) or about photosynthetic organisms deep in the ocean that use black-body radiation from a thermal vent as a source of photons (Beatty et al., 2005).
"The thought was that while there are some microbes that can eat compounds in coal directly, there may be smaller organic compounds – methane and other types of hydrocarbons - sourced from the coal that the microbes could eat as well".
Twenty-six hundred ideas from all over the world were entered and five winners were chosen — for example, microbes that can eat and recycle polyester and a wonderful textile fabric made out of citrus waste.
When jeans are washed with the microbe, it produces an enzyme that "eats" the indigo dye, giving a naturally faded look.
