Ocean Bacteria Produces Millions Of Hydrocarbons Annually

Millions of tons of hydrocarbons - a compound that's the primary ingredient in crude oil - are produced yearly by photosynthetic bacteria in the world's oceans, scientists have revealed.

A team of international researchers at the University of Cambridge collaborated with scientists from the University of Warwick and MIT to average out the amount of hydrocarbons produced by immense populations of photosynthetic marine microbes, otherwise known as cyanobacteria.

These organisms then support another population of bacteria that feed on the hydrocarbons. They measured the amount of hydrocarbons in a range of laboratory-grown cyanobacteria, where they used the data to estimate the amount produced in the oceans.

Two of the most abundant cyanobacteria in the world are Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus, and at any one time, researchers found more than two million tons of these bacteria in the ocean. This brought them to the conclusion that these two groups alone produce between 300 and 800 million tons of hydrocarbons each year.

"Hydrocarbons are ubiquitous in the oceans, even in areas with minimal crude oil pollution, but what hadn't been recognized until now is the likely quantity produced continually by living oceanic organisms," said Professor Christopher Howe from Cambridge's Department of Biochemistry, who is the senior author for the study, in a news release. "Based on our laboratory studies, we believe that at least two groups of cyanobacteria are responsible for the production of massive amounts of hydrocarbons, and this supports other bacteria that break down the hydrocarbons as they are produced."

The hydrocarbons produced by cyanobacteria are constantly broken down by other types of bacteria, making the concentrations of the compound rather low in any one location. However, researchers are now curious to test the exact measurements of cyanobacteria growing in the oceans, with interest in developing the hydrocarbon prospective for a commercial angle that could also work as a source of fuel. This step, however, is just in the preliminary stages. 

More information regarding the study can be seen via the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

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