Microbial methane production in the Surat Basin, Queensland

A large proportion of the methane found in coal seams is produced by microbial communities. Despite coal seam methane being a valuable resource for human energy security, the processes employed by these microbes in the production of methane are still not well understood. The best understood part of the coal degradation process is the final step of methane production, which is performed by microbes known as `methanogens'. As methanogens are present in many other anoxic environments, such as the digestive systems of animals, and the substrates they can work with are relatively simple, our understanding of the role of the methanogens within coal seam communities is much more complete than for the other microbes present. In order to investigate which types of methanogens are present within the Surat Basin, Queensland, and thus which substrates are likely being made available to them by other microbes during coal degradation, two datasets of coal seam microbial community DNA underwent a process of filtering and assembly to extract DNA sequences for key methane-producing genes (mcrA). This study used small variations within these methane producing genes to identify different groups of methanogens within the coal seam community, and found that there are two distinct methane-producing communities within the same basin at different locations.