Link Phototrophy and Methanotrophy in Glacial Bacteria

Bacteria are extremely versatile in their metabolic capabilities and thus play a fundamental role in virtually every ecosystem. Phototrophy, which is converting solar radiation to chemical energy, and methanotrophy, that consumes methane to provide both energy and carbon, are two widely used lifestyles in environmental bacteria. There is a long-standing hypothesis that these two metabolisms can co-occur in a single microbe. However, such intriguing microorganisms of great biotechnological potential have never been found in nature. Here we propose that phototrophic methanotrophs have evolved in the high Arctic glaciers as an adaptation to scarce organic matters but ample supplies of summer sunlight and methane from thawing permafrost. We will use a high-throughput cultivation approach coupled with the latest detection technology for photosynthetic pigments to isolate these capable microbes and uncover their genomic and metabolic secrets.