With a share of up to ten percent, ethane is the second most common component of natural gas and is present in deep-seated land and marine gas deposits all around the world. Up to now, it was unclear how ethane is degraded in the absence of oxygen. A team of researchers from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) have solved this mystery, after more than fifteen years of research work in cooperation with colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen. In a microbial culture obtained from Gulf of Mexico sediment samples, the scientists have discovered an archaeon that oxidises ethane. The single-celled organism has been named Candidatus Argoarchaeum ethanivorans, which literally means ‘slow-growing ethane eater’. In an article now published in the journal Nature, the researchers describe the metabolic pathway of ethane degradation.