Methane is a greenhouse gas that is roughly 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, making it a key target of global efforts to fight climate change. Dairy cows and beef cattle are a significant source of methane, which is released as a byproduct of food digestion in the stomach of cows and other hoofed animals. Kangaroos, like cows, also have microbes in their gut which aid in digesting plant material. But these microbes release acetic acid instead of methane. Scientists at Washington State University collected gut bacteria from zoo kangaroos, and then introduced cultures of the bacteria into a solution mimicking a cow’s stomach. The bacteria quickly flourished and replaced the community of methane-producing microbes. Birgitte Ahring is a professor in the Bioproducts, Sciences and Engineering Laboratory at Washington State University. She joins us to talk about the research, which is described in a paper recently published in the journal Biocatalysis and Agricultural Biotechnology, and how it could help the agriculture sector curb a potent greenhouse gas.