Boosting bromoform to minimize methane

Ruminants are a major source of greenhouse gases, but tweaks to their feed may help control those emissions. Several start-ups are developing feed supplements based on seaweed to control microbial methanogenesis in cow rumens . Researchers at the National Science Foundation’s Center for Cellular Construction at the University of California, San Francisco, are hoping to engineer seaweeds to bring bovine methane production down more efficiently. Red and brown algae, or seaweeds, produce bromoform, CHBr 3 , which can act as an inhibitor and block some of the series of metabolic enzymes that reduce CO 2 to form methane. But bromoform is a small, volatile molecule that algae release as a defense against predation, and it is it hard to tell how much makes it through processing and into a cow’s stomach. Researchers would like to find a method to stably sequester more bromoform in seaweed. But first they must determine