MARUM Re­search Award for Rafael Laso-Pérez

"I am extremely honoured to receive the MARUM Reserach Award for Marine Science for one of the best PhD theses", says Rafael Laso-Pérez. “This work would have never been possible without my supervisors and mentors, head of the MPI-research group and AWI-director Antje Boetius and Gunter Wegener, as well as many more people who have supported me during these years. Thanks to all of them, I could develop my research on some microorganisms that I consider amongst the most interesting in our field: anaerobic archaea." 

During his thesis, Laso-Pérez discovered that some anaerobic archaea are able to degrade multi-carbon hydrocarbons using a new version of a well-known mechanism. They used modified versions of the methyl-coenzyme M reductase (MCR) to activate these multi-carbon compounds. MCR has been known for a while as the key enzyme in the methane metabolism of archaea, being involved both in methanogenesis and methanotrophy. It was thought that MCR was highly specific for methane metabolism. However, the results of Laso-Pérez' thesis show the existence of modified MCRs that are used to degrade butane and propane in the novel archaea Ca.Syntrophoarchaeum. This discovery has opened up a new research topic. Several studies have found these MCRs in other archaea after Laso-Pérez' revelations. “All together, my research shows that archaea play a more important role in hydrocarbon cycling as previously thought and opens new perspectives in the role of MCR in archaeal evolution”, Laso-Pérez concludes.