Most of the cleaning up after an oil spill is done by the smallest organisms. Scientists don't know a lot about the clean up crews' tools.
In a study published last year, researchers uncovered a completely unknown cycle of natural hydrocarbon emissions and recycling, which could help us understand how some microbes have the power to clean up the mess an oil spill leaves in the ocean.
"Just two types of marine cyanobacteria are adding up to 500 times more hydrocarbons to the ocean per year than the sum of all other types of petroleum inputs to the ocean," said Earth scientist Connor Love.
This isn't a one-way, local dump.
40 percent of Earth's surface is covered in these hydrocarbons, which are mostly in the form of pentadecane.
According to Love and colleagues, only around 2 million metric tons are present in the water at any one time.
Love said that every two days you produce and consume all the pentadecane.
The Chisholm Lab is headed byluke Thompson.
The Prochlorococcus is a species of marine cyanobacteria.
Humans' footprints can be found in most parts of the world. There are many ways in which we emit these molecule composed of only carbon and hydrogen atoms.
It shouldn't be a big deal that traces of our own emissions drowned out our ability to see the enormous cycle that occurs in our oceans.
For the first time, Love and colleagues identified the global cycle.
The team had to position the ship to face the wind so that the diesel fuel that also contains pentadecane did not affect the seven sites they studied. People were not allowed to cook, smoke or paint on the deck.
"I'm not sure if you've ever been on a ship for an extended period of time, but you paint every day," said Earth scientist David Valentine from UCSB.
It's similar to the Golden Gate Bridge, in that you start at one end and end up at the other.
The researchers used a gas chromatograph to confirm the origin of the pentadecane in their samples.
They found that concentrations of pentadecane increased with the number of cyanobacteria cells, and that the geographic and vertical distribution of the hydrocarbons were consistent with the ecology of the microbes.
Around 25% of the global ocean's conversion of sunlight energy into organic matter is done by the prochlorococcus and synechococcus.
The organelle that photosynthesise is found in the cells of the cyanobacteria.
The cycle of pentadecane in the ocean follows the diel cycling of the cyanobacteria, which migrate in the water when there is a change in light intensity.
The findings show that the cyanobacteria are the source of the biological pentadecane, which is then consumed by other organisms that produce carbon dioxide to continue the cycle.
The Earth's natural cycle of oil and gas. David Valentine is an associate professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Love's team was able to identify dozens ofbacteria and archaea that bloomed in response to the addition of pentadecane.
They wanted to see if the microbes could break down the oil. There are areas in the Gulf of Mexico where there are active oil seepages.
Only the sea samples from areas already exposed to non-biological hydrocarbons contained organisms that bloomed in response to consuming these molecule.
The genes that can degrade these hydrocarbons were found to be different between the microbes and those that ate the oil.
The ocean's capacity to respond to petroleum input is different from the ocean's massive and rapid hydrocarbons cycle.
In order to understand the ecology and physiology of the creatures involved in Earth's natural hydrocarbon cycle, the researchers have begun to sequence the genomes of the microbes.
The findings show how little we know about the ecology of a lot of organisms.
The research was published in a scientific journal.
The first version of this article was published in February of 2020.
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