{"id":696,"date":"2017-07-13T15:48:30","date_gmt":"2017-07-13T22:48:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/labs.wsu.edu\/gcwblab\/?p=696"},"modified":"2026-05-12T10:58:40","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T17:58:40","slug":"new-paper-highlights-mystery-electron-acceptors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/labs.wsu.edu\/gcwblab\/2017\/07\/13\/new-paper-highlights-mystery-electron-acceptors\/","title":{"rendered":"New Paper Highlights &#8220;Mystery Electron Acceptors&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Methane is an important greenhouse gas, and lakes and reservoirs account for roughly 10% of methane flux to the atmosphere globally.&nbsp; The contribution of aquatic sediments to atmospheric methane would be much greater if it were not for methane oxidation, the microbial process whereby methane is converted to CO2, a much more soluble, less potent greenhouse gas.&nbsp; A paper just out in <em>Biogeochemistry<\/em> by Dan Reed, Bridget Deemer, Sigrid Van Grinsven, and John Harrison, titled <a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s10533-017-0356-3\"><em>Are elusive anaerobic pathways key methane sinks in eutrophic lakes and reservoirs?<\/em><\/a> provides new insight into this critical biogeochemical process.&nbsp; In the paper, Reed et al. show that concentrations of typical inorganic electron acceptors (compounds like oxygen, nitrate, and sulfate) are often insufficient to support observed rates of methane oxidation.&nbsp; To resolve this issue, we postulate that organic matter can serve as an important, though often-ignored, alternative electron acceptor in lakes and reservoirs, fueling high rates of methane oxidation, and urge the broader community to directly test this hypothesis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Methane is an important greenhouse gas, and lakes and reservoirs account for roughly 10% of methane flux to the atmosphere globally.&nbsp; The contribution of aquatic sediments to atmospheric methane would be much greater if it were not for methane oxidation, the microbial process whereby methane is converted to CO2, a much more soluble, less potent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1888,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_wsuwp_accessibility_report":null},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"wsuwp_university_location":[],"wsuwp_university_org":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/labs.wsu.edu\/gcwblab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/labs.wsu.edu\/gcwblab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/labs.wsu.edu\/gcwblab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labs.wsu.edu\/gcwblab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1888"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labs.wsu.edu\/gcwblab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/labs.wsu.edu\/gcwblab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1008,"href":"https:\/\/labs.wsu.edu\/gcwblab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696\/revisions\/1008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/labs.wsu.edu\/gcwblab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labs.wsu.edu\/gcwblab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labs.wsu.edu\/gcwblab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696"},{"taxonomy":"wsuwp_university_location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labs.wsu.edu\/gcwblab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wsuwp_university_location?post=696"},{"taxonomy":"wsuwp_university_org","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labs.wsu.edu\/gcwblab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wsuwp_university_org?post=696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}