The Struggle in Cattle Rumen and Against Global Warming

This post is mostly an effort to summarize this interesting but long article in The Washington Post. The TL TL/DR summary of the article is: archaea bacteria in rumens (one of the stomachs of cattle) produce methane which is a major contributor to global warming. Genetic modification of competing bacteria called duedenibacillus (which does not produce methane) can reduce the population of archaea in cattle rumen and reduce methane production.

I fear I have shortened the summary too much and the paragraph above is unclear, but I will go on. The TL/DR summary of my TL/DR summary is that one of cow’s stomachs contains competing bacteria some of which produce methane. Modifying the others to grow faster can reduce methane production.

I had a doubt about the approach. All of the types of bacteria have been evolving in and with cattle for millions of years. How can people hope to improve one of the bacteria so it outcompetes another ? That seemed ambitious in the extreme to me. Then I understood the key step – the modified deudenibacillus are fed to calves. This means that the challenge they face is completely different from the challenge in nature (or now in agriculture). The bacteria that evolved over millions of years have to get from one cow to another. The adaptations required for that challenging task may be (and empirically seem to be) inconsistent with maximizing growth once the bacterium is in a rumen.

The scientists face a different problem (just grow fast once one is in a calf) than the naturally evolving bacteria. It seems to be possible for the scientists to give duedenibacillus the edge in the competition with archaea and reduce methane production by cattle.

If you are interested in this TL/DR summary, I suggest you read the article, which is well written.