Rumen methanogens: a review

The Methanogens are a diverse group of organisms found in anaerobic environments such as anaerobic sludge digester, wet wood of trees, sewage, rumen, black mud, black sea sediments, etc which utilize carbon dioxide and hydrogen and produce methane. They are nutritionally fastidious anaerobes with the redox potential below -300 mV and usually grow at pH range of 6.0-8.0 [1]. Substrates utilized for growth and methane production include hydrogen, formate, methanol, methylamine, acetate, etc. They metabolize only restricted range of substrates and are poorly characterized with respect to other metabolic, biochemical and molecular properties.