All engine running.

Absolutely genius.

Welcome.

Welcome.

This is the show where we bring you science.

What that essentially means is discovery is advances, research, technology, unbelievable.

Without further ado, this is The Naked Scientists.

Hello and welcome to The Naked Scientists, the show where we bring you the latest breakthroughs in science, technology and medicine with me Will Tingle.

This episode, Titans of Science continues with the microbiologist who discovered how an extraordinary relationship between two methane-eating seafloor species has shaped the world we know today.

To explain that, and much more is the ocean officoficionado, Anja Boecius.

From Cambridge University's Institute of Continuing Education,

this is the Naked Scientists.

Antio Boetius was born on 5th of March, 1967, in Frankfurt in what was then West Germany.

She grew up there, attending Schuller and the Yusters von Liebig Gymnasium, both of which were in Darmstadt,

but enjoyed many opportunities to escape for a holiday at the seaside.

She studied biology at the University of Hamburg as an undergraduate and received a PhD from the University of Bremen in 1996. During that time, she undertook

14 deep-sea expeditions across the world's oceans, a number which is probably now closer to 50.

Acher then joined the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology first as a postdoc and then as an assistant professor.

She's currently the director of the Alfred Wagner Institute, which conducts climate and marine research in polar and high latitude waters.

Ansh's work has focused on deep sea microbiology, and she was the first person to describe anaerobic oxidation of methane,

a process by which some species of microbe can subsist without atmospheric or dissolved oxygen by splitting apart sulfate molecules for the oxygen therein.

The discovery of this process has highlighted the importance of keeping our sea floors pristine

...