Yo Bitch, let’s talk about cold seeps!

10. Blue Ice

You don’t need to track down Walter and Jesse to get your hands on some sweet blue ice. You can find Crystal Meth(ane) at the bottom of the ocean: high pressure and cold temperatures lead to the formation of gas deposits known as Methane Hydrates, where “molecules of natural gas are trapped in an ice-like case of water molecules”. These deposits look a little something like this:

Instead of scattered chunks you can also find HUGE blocks of Crystal Meth(ane). This is the largest one ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico, measuring in at a whopping 6 metres wide x 2 metres high x 1.5 meters deep!

9. Crack dens

I’m talking about the fissures in the seafloor – cold seeps are literal crack dens. Where do you think all that Meth(ane) comes from? It slowly seeps out of the seafloor!

Cold seeps occur over fissures on the seafloor caused by tectonic activity. Oil and methane “seep” out of those fissures, get diffused by sediment, and emerge over an area several hundred meters wide. Methane is the main component of what we commonly refer to as natural gas. But in addition to being an important energy source for humans, methane also forms the basis of a cold seep ecosystem. (NOAA Ocean Explorer)

This crab is a total junkie, so don’t mess with him – and definitely don’t laugh when he gets Meth(ane) all over his face!

 8. The symbiosis cartel

No one is running Lamellibrachia out of town. This chemosynthetic genus of tube worms dominates the habitat surrounding deep-sea Crystal Meth(ane). And this worm cartel has called the shots for a loooong time –  Lamellibrachia worms can grow up to 3 metres (10ft) tall, and live for 250 years!!

[Lamellibrachia] is entirely reliant on internal, sulfide-oxidizing bacterial symbionts for its nutrition. L. luymesi provides the bacteria with hydrogen sulfide and oxygen by taking them up from the environment and binding them to a specialized hemoglobin molecule. Unlike the tube worms that live at hydrothermal vents, Lamellibrachia uses a posterior extension of its body called the root to take up hydrogen sulfide from the seep sediments. Lamellibrachia may also help fuel the generation of sulfide by excreting sulfate through their roots into the sediments below the aggregations. (Wikipedia).

7. Magnets

Deepwater methane seeps are magnets for research – they definitely bring the dolla$. A quick search on the National Science Foundation website shows a total of 201 projects, and 34 currently active research grants focused on “seeps”. And its no wonder, because Crystal Meth(ane) is associated with a whole lotta different, specific habitats: oil/gas seeps, methane seeps, gas hydrate seeps, brine seeps, brine pools, pockmarks and mud volcanoes. There’s a lot to study!

6. Hesiocaeca methanicola is the one who knocks

That’s right bitches, I’m talking about Meth(ane) ice worms. Hesiocaeca methanicola polychaete worms. That live on Crystal Meth(ane) and feed on specialized bacteria that live on the methane hydrate. I’ll bet you $20,000 that this is the most badass thing you’ve learned all day.

5. Beggiatoa, Bitch!

Beggiatoa is a genus of filamentous bacteria that form colorful, fuzzy mats around cold seeps. Mats can be white, yellow, or orange, and the mat colors usually correspond to environmental conditions (such as temperature gradients). The colors also correspond to different species of Beggiatoa bacteria – these species are constantly competing with each other, vying for space on the seafloor and access to nutrients.

4. Um…AOM!

AOM = Anaerobic oxidation of methane. This is a totally important microbial process that prevents all the Crystal Meth(ane) on the seafloor from rising up and being released into the atmosphere. But the process has stumped scientists for years! Even now we don’t have a complete understanding of the microbes involved, but in recent years we’ve made some significant progress (especially with genomic tools). Here’s a quick overview of this complicated topic:

Vast amounts of methane are stored under the ocean floor. Anaerobic oxidation of methane coupled to sulfate respiration (AOM) prevents the release of this potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Although the process was discovered 35 years ago it has remained a long standing mystery as to how microorganisms perform this reaction. A decade ago, an important discovery was made which showed that two different microorganisms are often associated with AOM. It was proposed that these two microorganisms perform different parts of the AOM reaction. One, an archaeon, was supposed to oxidize methane and the other, a bacterium, was supposed to respire sulfate. This implied the existence of an intermediate compound to be shuttled from the methane oxidizer to the sulfate respirer. [But recent research has] turned this whole model on its head…the archaeon not only oxidizes methane but can also respire sulfate and does not necessarily need the bacterial partner. It appears that the archaeon does not employ the common enzyme toolbox that other known sulfate-respiring microorganisms use, but relies on a different, unknown pathway. (New article from the Max-Planck Institute)

3. Burn baby, burn!

OK, so there are a lot of explosions in Breaking Bad, but not so many in the deep-sea. However, another reason that Crystal Meth(ane) is awesome is because it BURNS. So #3 is just an excuse for me to put in some pictures of fire:

2. Time for a drink?

Marine Biology and Breaking Bad episodes usually involve a fair amount of drinking. Writing this Top 10 list has surprisingly involved no alcohol so far. But since I’m getting thirsty, I just wanted to remind everyone that Crystal Meth(ane) may have a connection to your drinking water. You might have heard of Methane Hydrates in the context of Fracking, a controversial mining technique often used to extract natural gas. Methane, is of course the main component of natural gas, and methane hydrates occur not only in the oceans but deep within terrestrial rocks and even in Arctic permafrost.

1. Its all about the chemistry

The chemistry of cold seeps is #1 because it would make Walter White proud. Cold seeps are all about chemistry – different compounds abound, organismal metabolisms adhere to a variety of pathways. Crystal Meth(ane) is defined by its chemical formula (CH4•5.75H2O), and AOM can be best described in equation terms: CH₄ + SO₄^2- → HCO_3- + HS^– + H₂O. Methane hydrates simultaneously represent one of the largest untapped fossil fuel sources on earth, and a potentially significant player in climate change. Understanding the chemistry of deepwater ecosystems will be vital knowledge in the decades to come.

The post Top 10 Reasons I Love Crystal Meth(ane) first appeared on Deep Sea News.

]]> https://deepseanews.com/2013/09/top-10-reasons-i-love-crystal-methane/feed/ 5 https://deepseanews.com/2013/07/breaking-baleen-if-walter-while-was-willy-the-whale/ Wed, 31 Jul 2013 15:21:04 +0000 https://www.deepseanews.com/?p=20772 Ever since I first saw Breaking Bad, I’ve been kind of obsessed with Cancer and Crystal Meth. (Legal Disclaimer: only the chemistry of Crystal Meth,…

The post Breaking Baleen: If Walter While was Willy the Whale first appeared on Deep Sea News.

]]> Ever since I first saw Breaking Bad, I’ve been kind of obsessed with Cancer and Crystal Meth. (Legal Disclaimer: only the chemistry of Crystal Meth, and only in theory).

As Walter White knows, cancer in humans is a lethal disease. It can be aggressive and unforgiving, with some varieties decimating the human body in a matter of months. Hence the entire plot of Breaking Bad, where Walter enters the world of illegal drugs in a desperate attempt to save money for his family and provide for them long after he’s gone.

If Walter was an wildlife biologist, he might have taken a different approach. He might have capitalized on one baffling fact: Whales don’t seem to die from cancer (or at least we don’t think they do). This is known as “Peto’s paradox”:

Larger organisms have more potentially carcinogenic cells, tend to live longer and require more ontogenic cell divisions. Therefore, intuitively one might expect cancer incidence to scale with body size. Evidence from mammals, however, suggests that the cancer risk does not correlate with body size. This observation defines ‘‘Peto’s paradox.’’ (Nagy et al. 2007)

This paradox is cool, but what it predicts its %P&*#ing awesome: a large body size hints at the existence of hypertumors: masses of cancer so big, that they implode on themselves and become self-destructive:

…models predict the possibility of ‘‘hypertumors,’’ aggressive cells that fail to secrete sufficient TAF [Tumor Angiogenic Factors] to support tumoral growth. In essence, hypertumors are composed of ‘‘cheaters’’ that take advantage of the vascular infrastructure built by other tumor cells. This population of cheaters grows parasitically on the tumor, damaging it perhaps to the point of inviability. (Nagy et al. 2007)

So basically that means a Blue Whale can swim around with a tumor that weights 600 pounds – a tumor the size of a BLACK BEAR – and still be just fine. That stuff cray!

No one has ever tested whether hypertumors *actually* exist, but Nagy et al. (2007) list three ways for us to figure this out once and for all: 1) Tumor death should rare in small animals, but become increasingly common in larger species. 2) Tumors in small animals should show varying levels of aggression, but those in larger animals should all show aggressive growth and expansions 3) Tumors in small animals should show varying development of blood vessels (vascularization), but all tumors in large animals should have a solid network of blood vessels. Lets bounce and test this, yo!

With the final 8 episodes of Breaking Bad coming up in a few weeks, I guess we’ll get to see whether Walter finally trades his drug production in favor of self-experimentation to induce hypertumors in his lung cancer. Something tells me no, but THAT would be definitely be an ending to remember!

Endnote: I first heard of this topic during a random conversation at at science conference–and then I thought it was so cool that I MUST BLOG. But then I discovered that Carl Zimmer already beat me to it in 2011. And Dr. M. even preceded that with a post in 2007 way back when DSN was on Science Blogs. The topic is so mind-blowing that I brought it up again, but go read both of these posts for lots more info!

Reference:

Nagy JD, Victor EM, Cropper JH. (2007) Why don“t all whales have cancer? A novel hypothesis resolving Peto”s paradox. Integrative and Comparative Biology, 47(2):317–28.

The post Breaking Baleen: If Walter While was Willy the Whale first appeared on Deep Sea News.

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