Current understanding of the diversity, biology, and ecology of Archaea is very limited, especially considering how few of the known phyla have been cultured or genomically explored. The reconstruction of “ Ca . Methanomixophus” MAGs not only expands the known range of metabolic versatility of the members of Archaeoglobi but also suggests that the phylogenetic distribution of MCR and MTR complexes is even wider than previously anticipated.

The lipopeptide produced by microorganisms is one of the representative biosurfactants and is characterized as a series of structural analogues of different families. Thirty-four families covering about 300 lipopeptide compounds have been reported in the last decades, and most of the reported lipopeptides produced by microorganisms were under aerobic conditions. The lipopeptide-producing strains under anaerobic conditions have attracted much attention from both the academic and industrial communities, due to the needs and the challenge of their applications in anaerobic environments, such as in oil reservoirs and in microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR). In this review, the fifty-eight reported bacterial strains, mostly isolated from oil reservoirs and dominated by the species Bacillus subtilis, producing lipopeptide biosurfactants, and the species Pseudomonas aeruginosa, producing glycolipid biosurfactants under anaerobic conditions were summarized. The metabolic pathway and the non-ribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPSs) of the strain Bacillus subtilis under anaerobic conditions were analyzed, which is expected to better understand the key mechanisms of the growth and production of lipopeptide biosurfactants of such kind of bacteria under anaerobic conditions, and to expand the industrial application of anaerobic biosurfactant-producing bacteria.

CO₂ geological sequestration in subsurface shale formations is a promising strategy to store CO₂ and to increase shale gas production. The understanding of gas adsorption and diffusion mechanisms in microporous media is critical for CO₂ storage-enhanced gas recovery (CS-EGR). The type of kerogens is one of the important factors that influence the adsorption and diffusion behaviors of gases. In this work, the Grand Canonical Monte Carlo and Molecular Dynamics simulations were utilized to develop kerogen models and further investigate gas and water adsorption and diffusion behavior on the type IA, IIA, and IIIA kerogen models. The results indicated that the adsorption and diffusion capacities of CO₂ are larger than those of CH₄. The adsorption and diffusion capacity decreased with increasing water content. However, the CO₂/CH₄ adsorption selectivity increased with the increase in water content. Type IIIA demonstrated the best potential for adsorption and diffusion. This study provides insights into the role of the adsorption and diffusion behavior of CO₂ and CH₄ mixtures on kerogens of different types under different water contents at a microscopic scale, and can facilitate further understanding of the processes involved in CO₂ storage coupled with enhanced energy recovery.