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Underground bacteria serve alcohol to methane-making microbes

Methanol is metabolized into the natural gas methane by many microbes living under Earth’s surface, but its source has been unclear. It emerges that some bacteria convert formate molecules into methanol and transfer it to methane-metabolizing archaea. Such a metabolic transfer of methanol between microbes has not been reported before.

This is a summary of: Huang, Y. et al. Methanol transfer supports metabolic syntrophy between bacteria and archaea. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08491-w (2025).

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00199-9

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