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Iron and manganese may help turn dissolved marine organic matter into complex compounds that are harder for microbes to break down, offering one plausible route for preserving carbon in seafloor sediments. Laboratory experiments support the chemistry, while a global estimate of its potential contribution comes from modeling—not a direct measurement of carbon burial.
How does the Maillard reaction help store carbon on the seafloor?
As marine organic matter degrades, some of it becomes dissolved organic carbon (DOC). That DOC may be remineralized into inorganic carbon, or it may be transformed and preserved in sediments. In a Maillard-type reaction, reducing sugars react with free amino acids to form larger, nitrogen-bearing compounds known as geopolymerized substances (GPS). Their size and structural complexity may make them harder for microbes to hydrolyse and consume.
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Moore and colleagues tested whether iron and manganese could catalyse this transformation under conditions relevant to marine sediments. Their 2023 study used glucose as a representative reducing sugar and glycine as a representative free amino acid. It tested dissolved iron and manganese under anoxic conditions, and the minerals ferrihydrite (an iron oxyhydroxide) and birnessite (a manganese oxide) under oxic conditions, at 10 °C. In the reported experiments, mineral catalysts produced up to two orders of magnitude more GPS than the catalyst-free control. The study in Nature supports a possible chemical pathway; it does not show that this reaction is the only source of persistent organic carbon in marine sediment.
What evidence connects the reaction to sediment organic matter?
The researchers compared carbon and nitrogen spectral signatures from their experimental products with those of DOC and organic carbon in continental-margin sediments. The signatures were similar, which is consistent with Maillard-type geopolymerization contributing to sediment organic matter. A resemblance is evidence for a plausible formation route, not proof that the experimental products and all persistent sediment carbon share one origin.
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As Moore and colleagues put it, “Here we present incubation experiments and find that iron and manganese ions and minerals abiotically catalyse the Maillard reaction by up to two orders of magnitude at temperatures relevant to continental margins where most preservation occurs.” The finding is based on incubations using the specific model molecules, catalyst forms and temperature described above.
How much carbon could this reaction preserve?
Moore and colleagues used a pore-water model informed by their experiments to estimate that iron- and manganese-catalysed transformation might generate approximately 4.1 Tg of carbon per year for preservation in marine sediments. This is a model-based estimate of a potential contribution, not a direct measurement of global burial attributable to the reaction.
The authors put that estimate in context by comparing it with about 63 Tg of carbon per year, the reported variation in sedimentary organic-carbon preservation over the past 300 million years. That comparison suggests the proposed pathway could be relevant to carbon preservation, but it does not establish that geopolymerization explains the long-term variation. Neither figure measures present-day atmospheric CO₂ removal by this process.
How does geopolymerization fit with other preservation processes?
Organic carbon can persist through more than one mechanism. Mineral sorption can bind DOC to or within minerals and protect it; molecular transformation can make organic matter less reactive. A 2025 conceptual-mathematical model considered DOC hydrolysis and remineralization, sediment mixing, mineral sorption and geopolymerization together. It found that preservation efficiency, when mineral-associated organic carbon is included, is almost three times the conventionally defined burial efficiency.
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In the model’s process-importance analysis, kinetic sorption ranked highest overall at 30.2 ± 3%, while geopolymerization accounted for 12.9 ± 1% of modeled overall preservation importance. For preservation of DOC-derived mineral-associated carbon, geopolymerization ranked highest at 29.8 ± 2%, followed by kinetic sorption at 22.6 ± 3%. These are model sensitivity or importance estimates, not measured shares of global carbon burial. The authors summarize their modeled result as: “Kinetic sorption and transformation are the dominant controls on organic carbon preservation.”
Together, the experiments and models point to a possible role for iron- and manganese-catalysed Maillard chemistry alongside mineral protection and DOC cycling. They do not establish the pathway as the dominant global preservation mechanism.
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Sources
- Moore and colleagues, 2023, Nature study on iron- and manganese-catalysed Maillard reactions.
- Babakhani and colleagues, 2025, Nature Geoscience model of organic-carbon preservation.
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