About This Project
Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, contributes significantly to climate change, with human activities accounting for over 60% of emissions. Rice plants release methane from soil to the atmosphere, contributing up to 40% of global emissions. This study proposes engineering plants to express methane monooxygenases (MMOs) to capture methane. This approach could reduce methane emissions, produce biofuel, and enhance plant growth, offering a sustainable solution for methane-rich environments.
Ask the Scientists
Join The DiscussionMotivating Factor
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, >20 times more potent than CO2. Globally >60% of methane emissions come from human activities, including livestock, artificial wetlands and landfills (https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/1561/2020/). Rice plants provide the main path to the atmosphere for methane produced in the soil of flooded rice fields. It is estimated that a 20% reduction in methane emission from rice fields would nearly halve the increase in tropospheric methane levels. Methanotrophic microorganisms are the only biological methane sink and perform a critical role in the global carbon cycle. The bacterial particulate (pMMO) and soluble (sMMO) methane monooxygenases are the predominant biological methane oxidation catalysts. Present in nearly all methanotrophs pMMO converts methane into carbon dioxide, producing methanol as a by-product (Lieberman et al., 2005).
Specific Bottleneck
Recombinant expression of MMOs has proven challenging even in bacteria. To date, no convincing enzymatic activity has been detected in organisms outside of bacteria.
The role of rice plants in the transport of methane from methane-rich paddy fields to the atmosphere has been long known (Nouchi et al., 1990). It has been confirmed that rice plants act as a conduit for the transfer of methane from the soil to atmosphere (Byrnes et al., 1995; Cicerone and Shetter, 1981). Methane produced in the soil is quickly entrapped by the water layers, taken up by roots and released into the atmosphere through plant transpiration (Colmer, 2003). Estimated fluxes of methane through plants in total vary from 46 (Ferretti et al., 2006) to 240 million tons per year (Keppler et al., 2006); this constitutes 10- 40% of annual global emissions. Under stress conditions, such as high UV radiation or heating methane is released due to cellular breakdown processes (Bruhn et al., 2012; Vigano et al., 2009).
Actionable Goals
Hence plants are a valuable point of action for methane detoxification processes. We hypothesize that plants expressing pMMO or sMMO will metabolize methane transported from soil through plants into the atmosphere, detoxifying soils high in methane and producing biomass for downstream carbon-negative biofuel production, as the by-product of the detoxification reaction, methanol stimulates plant growth. Foliar treatment with methanol showed 100% increase in yields. Such plants will be valuable in detoxifying soil high in methane – for example wetlands, ex-landfill sites or rice paddy fields.
Budget
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Meet the Team
Affiliates
Affiliates
Team Bio
Together the team has a unique and extensive track record in plant biotechnology combined with methanotroph bacteria and their enzyme complexes and state-of-the-art methane analysis.
Verena Kriechbaumer
Dr Verena Kriechbaumer (VK) is a recently tenured Reader in Biotechnology and Plant Sciences at Oxford Brookes University, with 44 peer-reviewed papers and 23 invited reviews/book chapters (h-index: 25). VK established her independent research group at OBU in 2017 when she was appointed as the University Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow in Biology. During her career VK has developed a particular fascination for enzymatic processes on membrane surfaces and their biotechnological applications. More recently she started utilising the power of advanced imaging technologies to investigate biochemical pathways in vivo. Her group has greatly advanced image analysis especially for the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) in plant and mammalian cells. Since her promotion to Senior Lecturer in 2020, she has secured over £1.14M in external funding. VK specializes in enzymatic processes on membrane surfaces and their biotechnological applications in plants.
VK has a track record of innovative interdisciplinary research. An example of successes gained from these approaches is the independent project with Prof A Nabok (SHU, Material and Engineering) using total internal reflection ellipsometry to quantify protein-membrane interactions on native plant membranes and human cell lines for precision medicine. VK obtained support for this work by winning two EPSRC Engineering for Life grants. An industrial collaboration with ChromoTek, Germany, led to a study on a novel actin marker. VK also secured industry funding from Porton Biopharma for a Masters project on modifying plants capable of production of human therapeutics.
VK will train, support supervise the PDRA in the production and evaluation of MMO-expressing plants. LinkedIn, ResearchGate, ORCID
Hendrik Schaefer
Prof Hendrik Schäfer (HS) is an environmental microbiologist at the University of Warwick. He has expertise in analysis of microbial communities and the characterisation of trace gas degrading bacteria. Recent research has focused on identifying the molecular basis of metabolism of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and methanethiol, microorganisms driving dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) reduction in anoxic sediments and trace degradation in the phyllosphere of plant, showing that the tree phyllosphere is a habitat for diverse carbon monoxide (CO) degrading bacteria. He has published >50 papers (h-index: 31) ResearcherID OrcID
Thomas John Smith
Molecular microbiologist with extensive experience of the genetics, biochemistry and biotechnological applications of methane-oxidising bacteria.
Prof. Thomas Smith (TS), Professor of Microbiology at Sheffield Hallam University, is a leading scientist in methanotrophs and methane monooxygenases. He established the genetic system for engineering soluble methane monooxygenase (sMMO) in methanotrophs and demonstrated its catalytic properties for regioselective biotransformations. His research has attracted funding from research councils, medical charities, and industry. He has 84 publications and 10 book chapters (h-index: 33). He will provide expertise in sMMO and pMMO activity measurements and mass spectrometry access to the project. ORCID
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