At this point, I had no more desire to work with these compounds, as they each
had a particularly and unique, penetratingly horrible odor. This would include DMS,
MeSH, DES, ESH, PSH, and ethanolamine. The only compounds given a pass in
this category were ethanol and propanol. I had had enough, and simply moved on to
other areas of research, assuming that whatever merit these investigations had its
publication would perhaps stimulate other researchers.
It took a while for some modest follow-up studies by other workers to accrue.
Koene-Cottaar and Schraa (1998) reported on an enrichment culture composed of
methanogens and an acetogen that with H 2 as an electron donor could carry out the
Fig. 30.4 Ethane production by anoxic sediment slurries from Big Soda Lake incubated under N 2 .
Symbols: amended with 10 mM DES (○), 1 mM ESH (▲), without amendments (□), with DES and
BES (●), and autoclaved with DES (Δ). Results represent the mean of 3 slurries and bars indicate
Æ1 standard deviation. Reproduced from Oremland et al. (1988) with permission
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