Hindawi Archaea Volume 2017, Article ID 1654237, 22 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/1654237 Review Article Reverse Methanogenesis and Respiration in Methanotrophic Archaea Peer H. A. Timmers,1,2,3 Cornelia U. Welte,3,4 Jasper J. Koehorst,5 Caroline M. Plugge,1,2 Mike S. M. Jetten,3,4,6 and Alfons J. M. Stams1,3,7 1 Laboratory of Microbiology, Wageningen University, Stippeneng 4, 6708 WE Wageningen, Netherlands 2Wetsus, European Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Water Technology, Oostergoweg 9, 8911 MA Leeuwarden, Netherlands 3Soehngen Institute of Anaerobic Microbiology, Heyendaalseweg 135, 6525 AJ Nijmegen, Netherlands 4Department of Microbiology, Radboud University, Heyendaalseweg 135, 6525 AJ Nijmegen, Netherlands 5Laboratory of Systems and Synthetic Biology, Wageningen University, Stippeneng 4, 6708 WE Wageningen, Netherlands 6TU Delft Biotechnology, Julianalaan 67, 2628 BC Delft, Netherlands 7Centre of Biological Engineering, University of Minho, Campus de Gualtar, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal Correspondence should be addressed to Peer H. A. Timmers;
[email protected] Received 3 August 2016; Revised 11 October 2016; Accepted 31 October 2016; Published 5 January 2017 Academic Editor: Michael W. Friedrich Copyright © 2017 Peer H. A. Timmers et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM) is catalyzed by anaerobic methane-oxidizing archaea (ANME) via a reverse and modified methanogenesis pathway. Methanogens can also reverse the methanogenesis pathway to oxidize methane, but only during net methane production (i.e., “trace methane oxidation”). In turn, ANME can produce methane, but only during net methane oxidation (i.e., enzymatic back flux).