Project Team and Abstract
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Project leadership team: Ekaterina V. Pletneva, Professor Department of Chemistry; William D. Leavitt, Assistant Professor, Department of Earth Sciences
Methane is a major contributor to global warming that has a 28 times greater global warming potential than carbon dioxide. While there are important efforts underway to trap and store methane from landfills, drilling sites, and other sources, wastewater treatment facilities are also a significant source of methane, a problem which has so far been largely unaddressed. The project team will use Irving Institute seed grant funding to focus on the development of microbial strategies to efficiently remove methane from wastewater.
The team will focus on better understanding the mechanism by which archaea and bacteria consume methane by mapping individual contributions of archaea and bacteria to methane removal, maximizing the efficiency of a sample consortium, and determining properties of an elusive bacterial enzyme that consumes methane. If successful, outcomes from this project will guide engineering strategies to microbial methane removal in wastewater treatment systems and provide recommendations for modifying synergistic consortia.