Alright I'll bite, what's a methanogen??
omg I actually wasn't even fishing for asks with that note, it was just me being a nerdy scientist! Methanogens are a group of microbes that I studied in my PhD. They look like bacteria in terms of size and shape, but they're actually from a distinct group of organisms called "archaea". Methanogens are special and environmentally relevant because they produce methane as a product of their central metabolism, sort of how we breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, methanogens "breathe" out methane. Methane, as you've probably heard, is rising in the atmosphere and contributing to global warming. Maybe you've heard about cows belching methane, but its actually the methanogens in their guts that make the methane! Anyways, in my PhD, despite the rest of my lab looking at how the methane is made, I studied the cell biology of these weird organisms because they are very ancient (have been around for billions of years, since before there was even oxygen in the atmosphere), and thus can tell us a lot about how early life evolved on earth! Thanks so much for asking! :)
