Have you ever been assaulted by a smell of rotten eggs? Imagine peaceful, taking a rejuvenating walk surrounded by nature and that suddenly, you are surprised by this foul smell! This is hydrogen sulfide (h2S), a toxic gas produced by certain microorganisms in the soils in the absence of oxygen.
This item – Ideas of ideas -is written by Jessika Malko, master’s degree in environmental sciences (profile with memory) of the University of Quebec in Trois-Rivières (UQTR).
Jessika Malko, master’s degree in environmental sciences (profile with memory) of UQTR.
Microorganisms
Archaea, bacteria, jollywood and prostists are in the ground under your feet, in the water you drink, in the air you breathe and even in your body! These microscopic unicellular organisms thrive absolutely everywhere! Without them, life on earth as we know it would simply not exist. In soils as in water, they decompose organic materials such as dead leaves and branches to their simplest molecular shapes. Passing masters in recycling, microorganisms feed the plants as an organic fertilizer and support the base of the animal kingdom’s food chain.
If microorganisms go unnoticed in everyday life, it is because you do not realize how important they are for you! In your body, they help you extract and absorb nutrients from the food you eat. In your intestines, microorganisms are the source of your pets. The gases they produce, stinking or inodores, are determined by their metabolism and what you give them to eat. Metabolism varies depending on the type of breathing. The breathing? Oxicous breathing and anaerobic breathing that we are going to look to understand where the h comes from2S.
Oxical breathing
Let’s go back to our peaceful march in nature. What’s going on when you start moving and doing physical activity? You breathe with oxygenated air. Like usmicroorganisms breathe and produce CO2. Remember your biology course in secondary: when your body degrades food, it produces pure energy, usable as it is, and high energy content electrons. Like Jason Statham in the film The carrierthe Nadh enzyme is responsible for driving these energy energy to your cells. The cell processing plant, mitochondria, uses electronic energy as a primary resource to produce an ATP molecule. Like the money that we exchange for goods, ATP is used as a currency of exchange to work your body. Stripped of its energy, the electron is then entrusted to an oxygen molecule which is responsible for escorting it outside the cell and your body. We are talking here about oxical breathing, it is when oxygen is used as an electron acceptor.
The same thing happens in microorganisms, but we are no longer talking about the body, we talk about a single cell. And the ATP processing plant? It is the cell wall or the cytoplasm, this glue that fills the cell. Millennial old, microorganisms are the first forms of life to have appeared on earth. They even existed before there was oxygen in the air. But how did they breathe?
Anaerobic breathing
Unlike us, Some microorganisms are able to breathe without oxygen. There are two scenarios that lead to the production of H2S. We are talking about redox processes. Don’t be afraid, I explain! As we have seen in our good old chemistry lessons, we are talking about the reduction and oxidation of sulfide molecules. In the case of reductionthe sulfide is involved in the end of the ATP production supply chain; It is a sulfide molecule that receives the electron instead of oxygen, as we have just seen. In the case of theoxidationthe sulfide is in the food degraded by microorganisms, such as garlic, onion, leek and cruciferous plants such as cabbage and broccoli. AAAAAH! So that’s what explains the flatulence that we associate with these vegetables!
Finally, whether in the soils or in your intestines, the smell of rotten eggs is associated with the sulfide involved in the without oxygen of microorganisms. As simple as that! Denser than air, h2S stays on the ground for a long time and that’s why your stinking farts seem to linger a long time around you!