However, bacteria fix the gas only when their population is high enough to trigger the quorum-sensing machinery.

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Bacteria which produce putrefaction and gas in the intestines cannot live in lactic acid.

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First, the hog waste is placed in an anaerobic digester, which contains bacteria that consume the manure and release methane gas.

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Then anaerobic bacteria take that nitrate and turn it into harmless nitrogen gas.

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These creatures, now called anammox bacteria, transform caustic and hazardous ammonium into dinitrogen, the harmless nitrogen gas that makes up 78% of the air we breathe.

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Mathur focused on detecting methane in the breath, since animal studies found that the presence of a certain family of organisms called archaea, which are older than bacteria and colonize the gut, was linked with weight gain and conveniently released small amounts of methane gas.

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