There’s a whiff of science fiction in the idea of clothes that power your watch, or iPod, or even pacemaker. However, the prototypes are already being stitched together. A quick search will turn up more examples than you’d care to try on for size (2003-Italy, 2007-Australia, 2008-Georgia, USA, 2009-USA, 2010-Berkeley, USA), the common thread through them all is the use of piezoelectricity. This is the ability of some materials to generate an electric field in response to mechanical stress – that is, bending. It the material is suitable, it can be cut and shaped to fit (somewhere) on the human body – typically shoes, shirts, belts (belts?) – that bends or twists with normal body movement.

As you might guess, the current generated by this kind of piezoelectric material isn’t very strong, typically measured in millivolts and nanoamps; but it’s not negligible. If there is some way to store and concentrate the energy generated while moving (so it’s also available when not moving), then there’s a way for piezoelectrics to be incorporated in articles of clothing and service small electronics.

There are several recent (2010) versions already:

Princeton University (New Jersey, USA) and CalTech (California, USA) have published a version that prints piezoelectric ribbons on rubber, which can then be incorporated into clothing, shoes, and the like. [Source: ACS Nanoletters]

Cornell University (New York, USA) in the laboratory of Juan Hinestroza, has developed cotton threads coated with electrically conductive nanoparticles. This material doesn’t generate the electricity, but can easily be hooked to flexible solar plates (somewhere on the body) to transfer the electricity. The apparent advantage of this approach is the material remains more like material and less like a plastic sheet (or some other marginally pliable material). [Source: EurekAlert]

The University of California Berkeley has developed nanofibers made from organic polyvinylidene fluoride (PVD), which is flexible and inexpensive to manufacture. The nanofibers respond to tugging or stretching to generate electricity. One of the contributions of the research was a technique that aligns the polymeric nanogenerators (how’s that for a cocktail party phrase?) 50 micrometers apart in a grid pattern. This makes it easier to control the placement of fibers, and more importantly to align the positive and negative ends of the fibers so they don’t cancel each other out. The fibers are essentially nanosize – so small that they wouldn’t be woven into fabric but perhaps mixed into a fabric almost like a coating. This particular method is apparently one of the most efficient yet developed. [Source: University of California Berkeley]

From all this activity, you’d think there’s a major demand for electrified clothing. Of course not; how could there be? Outside of a few prototypes, nobody’s worn an electric generating piece of clothing. It’s one of those pieces of technology that probably won’t find its killer app (don’t take that too literally) until the material is ready for commercial application. The simple, ‘well, it can provide free power to recharge your cell phone’ sounds good, but might not be enough to push the idea into the mainstream.

There are a few practical questions:

How will it last multiple washings with strong detergents?
Does it have anything that will eventually weaken with bending?
What can tears or holes do to the material’s electrical ability?
Is it comfortable to wear?
Will any of the ingredients cause allergic reactions?
For that matter, what will an electric field in clothing do to the body?
What will it cost? (Especially relative to battery technology.)
Does it also need (costly, ungainly) batteries to store the energy?

There are no doubt answers to all these questions, but not necessarily in a nice neat package. The ‘ideal’ approach to electricity generating clothing may not have been discovered yet. Nevertheless, this is the kind of technology on which new industries can be founded – as long as the technology becomes good, cheap, and flexible.

Until now, scientists believed these pathways operated largely independently of one another to produce protein signals that travelled to the nuclei of the embryo’s cells where DNA is stored. There, coordination of these signals was thought to occur when they interacted with cell DNA to influence and control the expression of genes. Results published March 9 in the journal Current Biology, however, suggest that competition for the MAPK enzyme among proteins in different pathways influences which signals are sent to cells, establishing a biochemical mode of signal integration that adds a previously unrecognized layer of complexity and control to embryonic development [emphasis added].

[Source: Cell News]

The study, led by a team from Princeton University (New Jersey, USA), was researching the chains of chemical reactions – chemical pathways – that lead undifferentiated cells (stem cells) to the correct location, to develop the necessary characteristics, so that an embryo develops the appropriate organs and the correct form for its species. Most of this process, guided by what is called the regulated gene expression network, is studied by systems biology and at the molecular level is barely charted territory. (This also means there’s more chance for the unexpected.)

Specifically, the research team was studying the chemical pathways of protein formation, the building blocks of living tissue, and how they integrate different signals (chemical states) that direct early embryonic development. As the quote points out, it was believed that these pathways were separate, and communicated only with DNA in the nucleus of cells to receive instructions for development. The focus of attention was a particular enzyme (a chemical that enables or speeds-up reactions) known as MAPK (mitogen-activated protein kinase). The MAPK enzyme is found in all complex organisms, and appears in chemical networks that are critical for cell development.

The subject for their observations was the old lab-buddy the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster), whose embryos were used to study development. What they discovered was that different protein pathways competed for the MAPK enzyme. The competition didn’t necessarily have ‘winners’ and ‘losers’, but it was a competition for scarce resources, so that if one protein pathway was (for a time) more successful in acquiring MAPK, then whatever it was building would grow faster. This competition is a control mechanism. While the DNA may be making the blueprint, this control mechanism (or others like it) may determine the distribution of resources determining what grows where and when. The idea that proteins working together – even outside the instructions of DNA – may be guiding embryonic development is…unexpected. For embryology it could be revolutionary, although that overworked word should take on meaning only after a lot more testing and analyzing the findings.

The research team was able to track the effect of this competition for the MAPK enzyme. For example, the portion of the embryo that would become the fly’s head was where the concentration of protein from one pathway was high. That’s where MAPK would also be present in higher concentration than in another pathway protein, say at the tail of the fly.

Further work: Just two words, but in this case it’s like opening a dictionary, which you thought had a thousand pages but now has many thousand pages. Having broached the concept that protein pathways can produce signals that compete for enzyme (and possibly other) resources, and that this competition is yet another complication to the network of gene expression during embryo development…to a molecular biologist this might suggest all kinds of questions (experiments). How do the proteins compete? What determines how long one protein is more successful than another? Are there other enzymes that have similar relationships with signaling pathways? Is this same effect at work in other species? Many, many questions – with the potential to edit (if not re-write) the book on developmental biology.

In some ways, this suddenly expanding field of research sounds familiar – it echoes the discovery that within cells epigenetics (gene expression directed by something other than DNA, especially proteins) is much more complex and influential than originally thought. These are heady discoveries that quicken the pulse of veteran biologists and make PhD candidates salivate over dissertation topics. Much further work indeed.

- An English major taking his biology exam referred to a microtome as an ‘itsy bitsy book.’

- Most microbiologists are well travelled people of many cultures.

- Most microbiology labs have a special room designated “Staph Only”

- How many fruit flies does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Can’t count them. We turn the lights out for privacy.

- How many biotechnologists does it take to change a light bulb?
None. Most of them can’t tell one dim bulb from another.

- One student’s exam called a hybrid screen “bait” and “pray”
I marked it OK.

- One very tired biologist thought he could explain neurotransmission with cellular phones.

- The next paper for a bacteriologist always needs the germ of an idea.

- A marriage between biologists is only a lab rat’s way of making another lab rat.

The work was undertaken by the European Union funded MetaHIT (Metagenomics of the Human Intestinal Tract) project with collaborating research teams in Europe and China. [Source: Nature Magazine: A human gut microbial gene catalogue established by metagenomics sequencing] The scope of the project, the vast amount of data it processed, and its potential impact make this something of a landmark study. It seems that everyone has their favorite (sort of weird science) statistics and information from this study. Here’s a sample:

- 576.6 gigabases of gene sequence
- 3.3 million non-redundant microbial genes
- The human body hosts trillions of micro-organisms, most of which live in our gut
- There are more bacterial cells in our body than our own cells (however, our cells outweigh them)
- 99% of the genes are bacterial, from about 1,150 species
- About 160 species of gut bacteria are shared by all people
- You have lots of co-workers in your gut
- Most of the microbes in the gut are not harmful (when in balance)
- Many of the microbes contribute important chemicals and processes to digestion
- Your gut may actually be telling you something

This last one – Your gut may be telling you something – is one of the more interesting spins. It’s a characterization of the possibility the bacteria in your gut produce enzymes, messenger molecules, and other chemistry that may ‘dictate’ your state of hunger (and for what) and perhaps regulate other ‘feelings’ about your health. I’m sure there will be follow-up research in this area.

However, the more important research, already begun in this study, is a result of comparing the genomic components of this microbiome between people from different locations and health conditions. The study itself involved testing the feces from 124 Europeans and is now being widened to 350 individuals with a variety of obesity and bowel problems. While it showed quite dramatically that most of the microbes in the human gut are shared by all of us, there are significant differences – sometimes by locale, sometime by individuals. Analysis of these differences, especially for medical purposes, should be some of the more important findings developed from the data in the catalog.

During much of human history shamans and doctors have studied our stercoraceous output for signs of disease (and other problems). We’ve come a long way…

It’s been known for a long time that it probably originated where there was a concentrated mixture of organic compounds. (Just because they’re called organic, doesn’t mean all such compounds come from living things – it simply means they’re carbon-based.) Out of that mixture, which is usually labeled the primal soup came the chemical processes that eventually put together some of the available organic compounds until they became ‘self-assembling’ – a process that would automatically repeat following natural chemical reactions (or pathways). For this to happen, it was necessary that short organic compounds (‘short’ meaning just a few elements such as carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen in a simple chain) into even longer organic compounds – polymers. Eventually within the ‘primal soup’ polymers were created that at least partly resembled RNA (Ribonucleic Acid), which is now the ‘messenger’ of the DNA code but archaically almost certainly developed before DNA.

The ‘proto-RNA’ was probably a short polymer. Longer polymers don’t form easily. That’s a way of expressing the fact that the two ends of a polymer chain have a tendency to bond with each other, rather than forming longer chains with other materials. The tendency is called cyclization – forming loops. With a proto-RNA or DNA that would have been the end of development. There is a way out of this tendency to loop, which has been identified as an intercalator. This is a molecule that reacts with the strands of RNA (or DNA) making them spread their molecules. (In modern RNA, this usually means the strand expands at the point where the intercalator is present.) When that spread occurs, other organic compounds can be attached – thus creating a longer polymer.

Such an intercalator is what a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA) has discovered. They found that the molecule of ethidium (traditionally an antiviral or trypanocidal agent) assisted short oligonucleotides (a nucleic acid polymer, in this case a short piece of proto-RNA or DNA) in forming longer polymers and is also involved in selecting the structure of base pairs (the four building blocks of RNA: adenosine, cytosine, guanine, and uracil).

“Our hypothesis is that before there were protein enzymes to make DNA and RNA, there were small molecules present on the pre-biotic Earth that helped make these polymers by promoting molecular self-assembly,” said Nicholas V. Hud, professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
…

“In our experiment, we found that the midwife molecules present had a direct effect on the kind of base pairs that formed. We’re not saying that ethidium was the original midwife, but we’ve shown that the principle of a small molecule working as a midwife is sound. In our lab, we’re now searching for the identity of a molecule that could have helped make the first genetic polymers, a sort of ‘unselfish’ molecule that was not part of the first genetic polymers, but was critical to their formation,” said Hud.

[Source: EurekAlert]

Ethidium or its equivalent must have been present in the mix of the ‘primal soup.’ One more small piece of the chemistry set that eventually became life.

There was something different about the carbon nanotubes. They were coated with a layer of fuel that can produce heat when it decomposes (burns). The fuel was ignited at one end of a nanotube with a laser or high voltage spark. It was like a fuse, a very fast fuse, traveling as a wave of heat (3000 degrees Kelvin) spreading along the tube 10,000 times faster than a normal chemical reaction. As predicted by mathematical studies, the thermal wave pushed electrons ahead of it, sort of collecting them as a beach wave will collect flotsam from the water, creating an electrical current. This much was expected. What was not predicted by the thermoelectric calculations was the magnitude of the voltage peak.

Normally with carbon, the Seebeck effect, which produces electricity from a heated semiconductor, is very weak. Something else was happening. As the senior author, Dr. Michael Strano (Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, MIT) puts it:

“We call it electron entrainment since part of the current appears to scale with wave velocity.”

The thermal wave, he explains, appears to be entraining the electrical charge carriers (either electrons or electron holes) just as an ocean wave can pick up and carry a collection of debris along the surface. This important property is responsible for the high power produced by the system, Strano says.

Because this is such a new discovery, he says, it’s hard to predict yet exactly what the practical applications will be. But he suggests that one possible application would be in enabling new kinds of ultra-small electronic devices — for example, a devices the size of grains of rice, perhaps a sensor or treatment device that could be injected into the body. Or it could lead to “environmental sensors that could be scattered like dust in the air,” he says.

[Source: EurekAlert]

After some refinement, the thermopower system produces energy in proportion to its weight about 100 times greater than an equivalent weight lithium-ion battery. However, as would be expected, much of the energy produced is also in the form of heat and light – not exactly what’s needed for most practical energy sources. Packaging and efficiency will be important limitations to overcome. On the other hand, eventually carbon nanotubes will be inexpensive; moreover the nanotubes loaded with the fuel coating can sit in storage for a long time without losing ‘charge’ as typical batteries would do. The combination of ingredients could lead to interesting niche uses for this ‘new’ energy source.

“Measuring the rate at which new species evolve is difficult, but there’s no question that the current extinction rates are faster than [replacement]; I think it’s inevitable.”

The IUCN created shock waves with its major assessment of the world’s biodiversity in 2004, which calculated that the rate of extinction had reached 100-1,000 times that suggested by the fossil records before humans.

No formal calculations have been published since, but conservationists agree the rate of loss has increased since then, and Stuart said it was possible that the dramatic predictions of experts like the renowned Harvard biologist E O Wilson, that the rate of loss could reach 10,000 times the background rate in two decades, could be correct.

“All the evidence is he’s right,” said Stuart. “Some people claim it already is that … things can only have deteriorated because of the drivers of the losses, such as habitat loss and climate change, all getting worse. But we haven’t measured extinction rates again since 2004 and because our current estimates contain a tenfold range there has to be a very big deterioration or improvement to pick up a change.”

[Source: The Guardian]

What may be meant by “measuring the rate at which new species evolve is difficult” is that we don’t know how many species there are. Current knowledge puts the number at about 2 million species, but most biologists believe it to be more like 5 – 30 million species. Based on the fossil record, which is incomplete, only about 2-4% of species that have ever lived are now alive; extinction is part of the natural process. Also based on the fossil record, it is estimated that historic rate is 1 species lost per 1,000,000 species, per year.

Since 1500 (AD) only 869 extinctions have been formally described. However, of the roughly 2 million known species, about 3% have a known conservation state (e.g. species census). Only this base figure is used to extrapolate the rate of loss of species at approximately 100 to 1,000 per million species per year. This rate of loss is comparable to five previously known “mass extinctions.”

A quick analysis of almost all the numbers reveals they are very rough estimates based on incomplete information. Not good statistics. This is where critics jump in first. Pointing out the lack of accuracy is usually taken a further step to ‘untrustworthy figures.’ Since the species loss estimates are often cited as evidence for global warming – and indeed most biologists point to human activity, including man-made climate change as a key reason for species loss – the lack of trustworthy estimates is considered (another) sign of the weakness of global warming theories, and the lack of a pressing need to do anything about it.

The counter argument is fairly simple: Rough or not (“precision” is not a word used around this kind of biology), the magnitude of the numbers estimated for species loss is far greater than the magnitude of possible error. In short, to ignore the existence of an ongoing “mass extinction” is to pin too much weight on a false sense of statistical accuracy. This argument is extended (by a Swedish study) that warned about any species loss over 10 times the background rate (10 species per million per year) as bad for human beings. Most biologists think the current rate is much higher than that. It’s that “much higher” expression that forms the margin (or cushion) to say that whatever the inaccuracy of estimates, the rate of loss is still too high – and it is indicative of something unusual, a mass extinction period.

Three comments: The scale of time and numbers – and ignorance – in the species loss statistics is so great, all parties generally feel free to throw around numbers without much reference to supporting evidence.

Much of the supporting evidence is not in the aggregate numbers, but in the painstaking individual studies of ecosystems, the fossil record at specific locations (and times), and the tracking of specific species (like hunting and fishing records for species). Biologists will point to ‘large numbers’ of such studies all pointing in the direction of increasing species loss in the last two hundred years.

In addition to the statistics, such as they are, there is an appeal to ‘common sense:’ It’s obvious that human beings are using and changing more of the world’s surface than ever before. This inevitably will impact other living things that use this same area. That impact will usually be negative; in fact, it will usually lead to extinction for some (or many) species.

In short, we’ll be arguing the magnitude of species loss for a long time to come, but that argument won’t change the fact that we are losing species faster than they are evolving.

It’s more than a disinfectant and hair bleach, that’s for sure. It’s an organic compound (H2O2) found in all organisms that use oxygen for metabolism. It has been known for some time that hydrogen peroxide can damage cells and DNA, but recently it’s also become known that it is used as a signaling molecule for the stimulation of cell growth. Signaling molecules are like messengers; they get sent when something needs to happen – in this case, the chemistry of cell metabolism comes to the point where cell growth or division is ‘necessary’ and it generates hydrogen peroxide molecules. These molecules, in turn, work with a common growth factor called EGF (Epidermal Growth Factor), which binds to its receptor on the outer membrane of cells (EGFR). This induces cells to grow or divide. In some way (still unknown) hydrogen peroxide amplifies the EGFR signal.

The hydrogen peroxide molecule is very small and typically does not leave the vicinity of a single cell – hence the need for detection at the level of one molecule and one cell.

The sensor constructed at MIT is a film of carbon nanotubes embedded in collagen (a gel-like protein that makes up about 20-35% of animal tissue). Cells are grown on the surface of this nanotube ‘carpet’ and the collagen attracts the hydrogen peroxide produced by the cells. To get to the collagen, however, the hydrogen peroxide must enter a nanotube. The nanotubes have been treated with a fluorescent material that reacts in the presence of hydrogen peroxide. The nanotubes ‘flicker’ when reacting, which can be recorded and counted – thus providing an accurate count of the production of hydrogen peroxide, one molecule at a time.

This has a variety of uses…

The team also found that in skin cancer cells, believed to have overactive EGFR activity, the hydrogen peroxide flux was 10 times greater than in normal cells. Because of that dramatic difference, Strano believes this technology could be useful in building diagnostic devices for some types of cancer.”You could envision a small handheld device, for example, which your doctor could point at some tissue in a minimally invasive manner and tell if this pathway is corrupted.”

Strano points out that this is the first time an array of sensors with single-molecule specificity has ever been demonstrated. He and his colleagues derived mathematically that such an array can distinguish “near field” molecular generation from that which takes place far from the sensor surface. “Arrays of this type have the ability to distinguish, for example, if single molecules are coming from an enzyme located on the cell surface, or from deep within the cell,” says Strano.

Strano’s team is also working on carbon nanotube sensors for other molecules. The team has already successfully tested sensors for nitric oxide and ATP (the molecule that carries energy within a cell). “The list of biomolecules that we can now detect very specifically and selectively is growing rapidly,” says Strano, who also points out that the ability to detect and count single molecules sets carbon nanotubes apart from many other nanosensor platforms.

[Source: EurekAlert]

At the moment, the single molecule sensor array is more of a laboratory tool. It will be useful in pursuing the role of hydrogen peroxide in cell growth, of course; but if the approach is easily manufactured, and adaptable to other molecules – then this will become part of the ever increasing range of sensor technology.

The use of endothelial cells built on work by Dr. Shahin Rafii, which produced genetically modified endothelial cells so they would stay in a long-term survival state. (Otherwise endothelial cells require difficult maintenance with specific growth factors to keep them alive.) The genetic modification inserted a gene from a recently discovered adenovirus, one that does not promote cancer forming transformation of human cells – an obviously important qualification.

“This study will have a major impact on the treatment of any blood-related disorder that requires a stem cell transplant,” says the study’s senior author, Dr. Shahin Rafii, the Arthur B. Belfer Professor in Genetic Medicine, co-director of the Ansary Stem Cell Institute and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, at Weill Cornell Medical College. Currently, stem cells derived from bone marrow or umbilical cord blood are used to treat patients who require bone marrow transplants. Most stem cell transplants are successful, but because of the shortage of genetically matched bone marrow and umbilical cord blood cells, many patients cannot benefit from the procedure.
“Over the last few decades, substantial funding has been spent to develop platforms to expand adult stem cell cultures, but these efforts have never been able to coax an authentic adult stem cell to self-renew beyond a few days,” continues Dr. Rafii. “Most stem cells, even in the presence of multiple growth factors, serum, and support from generic non-endothelial stromal cells, die after a few days. Now, employing our endothelial stem cell co-cultures, we can propagate bona fide adult stem cells in the absence of external factors and serum beyond 21 days with an expansion index of more than 400-fold.”
[Source: EurekAlert]

This study also shed new light on the functions of endothelial cells, well beyond their fundamental use as the basic tissue of the vascular system, and even beyond their (now demonstrated) role in production of adult blood stem cells. It appears that endothelial cells contribute control factors for the production of a number of adult (that is, differentiated) stem cells for other organs such as the brain, liver, and lungs.

The PR announcement for this study is almost breathless from uttering superlatives like ‘breakthrough’ and ‘innovative.’ Probably so, but it also mentions that the results are pending verification – that is, reproduction of the experiments and results by other scientists. That would also include unexpected behaviors like side effects that could result from producing adult stem cells in this fashion. Nevertheless, this seems to be an important step in the direction of producing sufficient quantities of non-embryonic, long-lasting stem cells for medical and laboratory purposes.

The East Siberian shelf is a region north of present-day Siberia (Russia) that at one time was above sea-level, and where extremely thick beds of peat once formed. However, these beds were frozen, becoming part of the permafrost and then submerged by a rising sea. In theory, the methane produced by peat beds (which can over time become lignite, brown coal) should have stopped forming, or have been trapped in the permafrost and under the sea. So when significant quantities of atmospheric methane were detected after 2003, it was assumed that something was happening to release the methane.

The speculation (hypothesizing) was that as the Arctic Sea warms due to Global Warming, especially in the summer months, the frozen beds of peat begin to unfreeze and release ever increasing amounts of methane. Then, instead of mixing with sea-water to produce CO2, the methane was making it to the surface of the sea and being released more or less raw into the atmosphere.

The new study, conducted by the University of Alaska Fairbank in conjunction with 12 other institutions, puts more data into the methane pot:

Starting in the fall of 2003, Shakhova, Semiletov and the rest of their team took the studies offshore. From 2003 through 2008, they took annual research cruises throughout the shelf and sampled seawater at various depths and the air 10 meters above the ocean. In September 2006, they flew a helicopter over the same area, taking air samples at up to 2,000 meters (6,562 feet) in the atmosphere. In April 2007, they conducted a winter expedition on the sea ice.

They found that more than 80 percent of the deep water and more than 50 percent of surface water had methane levels more than eight times that of normal seawater. In some areas, the saturation levels reached more than 250 times that of background levels in the summer and 1,400 times higher in the winter. They found corresponding results in the air directly above the ocean surface. Methane levels were elevated overall and the seascape was dotted with more than 100 hotspots. This, combined with winter expedition results that found methane gas trapped under and in the sea ice, showed the team that the methane was not only being dissolved in the water, it was bubbling out into the atmosphere.

These findings were further confirmed when Shakhova and her colleagues sampled methane levels at higher elevations. Methane levels throughout the Arctic are usually 8 to 10 percent higher than the global baseline. When they flew over the shelf, they found methane at levels another 5 to 10 percent higher than the already elevated Arctic levels.

The East Siberian Arctic Shelf, in addition to holding large stores of frozen methane, is more of a concern because it is so shallow. In deep water, methane gas oxidizes into carbon dioxide before it reaches the surface. In the shallows of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, methane simply doesn’t have enough time to oxidize, which means more of it escapes into the atmosphere. That, combined with the sheer amount of methane in the region, could add a previously uncalculated variable to climate models.

“The release to the atmosphere of only one percent of the methane assumed to be stored in shallow hydrate deposits might alter the current atmospheric burden of methane up to 3 to 4 times,” Shakhova said. “The climatic consequences of this are hard to predict.”

[Source: EurekAlert]

Other experts point to problems with this hypothesizing. First and foremost, there is not enough data from previous years to prove the Siberian outgassing is new. Methane outgassing could have been taking place for hundreds or thousands of years; it could be a regular feature of the Arctic regions (with variations). We don’t know.

Another problem is the absolute quantity of methane. While the figures indicate that the Siberian region might produce as much methane as the rest of the world; methane from ocean sources is but a fraction of that from land – unless a catastrophic release of some kind is generated, the Siberian Margin would not, of itself, increase the methane proportion in the atmosphere that significantly. This is particularly true because methane remains in the atmosphere a relatively short time, a decade or two at most. Only a catastrophic release of methane from frozen peat (land or sea) would be significant – and there’s no evidence of such a catastrophe in the offing.

There are problems with the criticism: We will never know if this is a new phenomenon from direct data of observation. The history will have to be inferred, if reconstructed at all. What’s important is the ongoing data. Calculating the absolute amount of additional methane is also very difficult. Mostly the data shows ‘indicators’ – samples – not actual volumes. Nevertheless, the team that put together this study is currently drilling into the seafloor to attempt estimates of how much methane is stored there.

This is typical give and take for a significant scientific body of research. It’s why, in the final analysis, “More research is needed” is often the prescription.