Advisor:
James G. Ferry
Stanley Person Professor of Molecular
Biology
Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Pennsylvania
State University
205 S. Frear Laboratory
University Park, PA 16802
My EmailsHi Mr. Ferry
I am a High School Sophomore at Brien McMahon High School of Norwalk, Connecticut in US. I am currently doing a nanotechnology innovation project, putting an existing nanotechnology to a new purpose. My personal idea is to use nano-silver to eliminate large numbers of methanogens from wetlands and rice paddy fields, as to reduce high percentages of methane emissions and reduce ozone depletion. The last requirement of the project is advice from a scientist. I am seeking out help from an ecologist who is familiar with methanogens, for I need advice to whether or not killing large numbers of methanogens would have a fatal impact. What would be the ecological effect of my plan? Attached is a copy of my current idea. A website accompanies this project- the URL is http://nanosilver.webs.com/. The website is not near completion but it is published. Thank You, Vishesh Ramesh Hi Mr. Ferry, I'd like to thank you for the advice earlier about my project regarding the use of nano-silver to exterminate populations of methanogens. Thanks to you I've nearly finished the project, but need some further information on methanogens. Can you please tell me what makes them so ecologically vital? Is it their elimination of carbon dioxide through anaerobic methanogenesis? This means a lot to me. Thank You, Vishesh |
Mr. Ferry's AdviceDear Vishesh,
Your ultimate goal of reducing methane emissions is good but to reduce from wetlands is definitely NOT not a good way to do it. Methane producing bacteria are important microbes for the overall ecology of wetlands which are very fragile environments of great importance to the global ecology. A better approach would be to stop human activities like deforestation which contributes to plant material left on the forest floor that is converted to methane by methanogens working together with other microbes. Inhibiting methanogens in natural environments is generally not a good idea. Plus, you never know what nano-silver will do to life in the wetlands that is so important to many species that reproduce there. Hope this helps. JG Ferry Hi Vishesh, Methanogens are essential to Earth's ecology because without them carbon dioxide would not be returned to the atmosphere for plants to use. Methanogens are essential for decomposition of plant material that enters anaerobic environments. They, together with other anaerobic microorganisms, decompose the plant material to methane and carbon dioxide. Most of the methane that is produced is converted to carbon dioxide by microorganisms that live outside the anaerobic environment and require oxygen (some escapes into the atmosphere where it is a green house gas contributing to global warming). So, all of the plant material that enters anaerobic environments eventually is changed back to carbon dioxide for plants to make more plant material. An example is a pond lined with trees. The leaves fall into the pond in the Fall and enter the sediment where they are digested to half methane and half carbon dioxide. The methane escapes into the water above where the methane is further metabolized to carbon dioxide by oxygen-requiring bacteria. All the carbon dioxide is taken up by the plants in the Spring to make more leaves (by photosynthesis) and bigger tree trunks that eventually die and fall into the pond where the trunks are also digested to methane and then carbon dioxide. Without anaerobic bacteria to digest the plant material in the bottom sediment of the pond, all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be locked up in plants and never digested back to carbon dioxide to complete the cycle (we call this the global carbon dioxide cycle). In time the Earth would be deep in trees (and other plants) until no carbon dioxide were available for photosynthesis and life would cease to exist at that point and we would have a dead planet. The plants that were piled up would eventually be covered and, in time, converted to coal with no humans to burn it and return carbon dioxide back to the atmosphere for plants to grow. Hope this helps. JGFerry |