From Tom Heydeman
Bob Holmes suggests that the bacterium Syntrophus would produce pure hydrogen for us, were it not for its attendant methanogenic archaebacteria, which convert the hydrogen into methane (18 April, p 8). In fact, Syntrophus would not grow at all in isolation – and the name reflects this.
Syntrophus and the archaebacteria work by syntrophic cooperation: the former is able to produce hydrogen only as long as the latter maintain a virtually zero concentration of hydrogen around it. Break the link and it becomes thermodynamically impossible for the hydrogen to be generated.
Reading, Berkshire, UK
