Isolation and culture of methanogenic and methanotrophic archaea：a review

Abstract:

Climate warming is a global challenge, and the main culprit is the continuous emission of greenhouse gases. Methane (CH₄), the second most abundant greenhouse gas, accounts for 20% of global warming effects. However, it is difficult to culture methanogens and anaerobic methanotrophic archaea (ANME), which play an important role in methane metabolism, thus hindering the research on methane metabolism, the influence on related carbon resource-sink relationships, and the mechanism. This paper reviewed the enrichment, culture and isolation methods of methanogens and ANME, including enrichment culture, in-situ culture, co-culture, microfluidic technologies, dilution-extinction and solid separation technologies, ANME reactor and flask enrichment culture, metagenomic prediction, and reverse genomics. Then we evaluated these methods and put forward suggestions for the future enrichment, isolation, and culture of methane-metabolizing archaea.