Der „Wasserstoffkörper“, eine neu entdeckte Struktur in mikrobiellen Zellen im Darm von Kühen, könnte laut einer neuen Studie eine Schlüsselrolle bei der Methanproduktion spielen | Pansenwimpern modulieren die Methanemissionen bei Wiederkäuern

Sections from the article:

>Among the microbes in their gut are a group of microorganisms called “rumen ciliates” that help the bovines digest food and are named for the rumen, the stomach compartment they inhabit, and the cilia, or tiny hairs, that cover their surface. Scientists have suspected for years that these microbes were involved in making methane in cows’ gut, but exactly how they were involved was a mystery.
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>New research could hold the key. In a paper published on Thursday in Science, researchers describe how hydrogenobodies in rumen ciliates in the guts of dairy cows remove oxygen and produce hydrogen—which other microbes then use to make methane.
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>To identify the hydrogenobody—and confirm its role in methane production—the new study’s authors combined genetic analyses of hundreds of rumen ciliate genomes with detailed imaging of the microbes, as well as real-life methane measurements from dairy cows.
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>“We were somewhat surprised by how clearly this structure links cell biology to methane emissions,” says Jie Xiong, a co-author of the study and a professor at the Institute of Hydrobiology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The team found that rumen ciliates with more of the hydrogen-producing structures helped generate more methane than microbes with fewer hydrogenobodies did.
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>The findings track with previous research showing that methane-producing microbes called methanogens that can also live in cattle’s gut tend to congregate close to microbes that produce hydrogen, Kebreab says, “but this shows the mechanism by which the hydrogen is produced.”

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Research link: [Rumen ciliates modulate methane emissions in ruminants](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adv4244)

Abstract:

>Rumen ciliates are major contributors to enteric methane emissions from ruminant animals, yet the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. We present a catalog of 450 rumen ciliate genomes, with 87% newly generated. Using this resource, we quantified methane emissions from 100 cows and analyzed 1877 rumen metagenomic and metatranscriptomic datasets, which revealed correlations among ciliate abundance, methanogen abundance, and methane emissions. We further demonstrated that taxon-specific effects of rumen ciliates on methane production arise from a single-membrane, hydrogen-producing organelle called the hydrogenobody (HB), which is distinct from canonical hydrogenosomes in other protists. HBs are positioned near ciliary basal bodies and harbor specific hydrogenases and oxygen reductases. We found that Vestibuliferida ciliates, which have more abundant HBs than do Entodiniomorphida, exhibit enhanced hydrogen production and oxygen-scavenging capacity, thereby strongly promoting methanogenesis.

Cultivate these microbial colonies in a study sealed environment. Vent that ass gas directly into a hydrogen engine and bam, a self fueling fartcar.