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Iron- and manganese-catalysed Maillard chemistry may help turn dissolved marine organic matter into complex compounds that persist in seafloor sediments. Laboratory experiments support this as a plausible preservation pathway, but the often-cited estimate of 4.1 teragrams of carbon per year is model-based—not a direct measurement of burial or atmospheric CO₂ removal.
How does the Maillard reaction help store carbon on the seafloor?
Marine organic matter is continually broken down. Some becomes dissolved organic carbon (DOC), which can be converted back into inorganic carbon by microbes or undergo further chemical change. In a Maillard-type reaction, reducing sugars and free amino acids combine to form larger, nitrogen-bearing compounds called geopolymerized substances (GPS). Their size and structural complexity may make them harder for microbes to hydrolyse and consume, allowing some carbon to persist in sediments.
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Oliver W. Moore and colleagues tested whether iron and manganese could catalyse this chemistry under conditions relevant to marine sediments. Their 2023 Nature study reports 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.” Read the study in Nature.
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The experiments used glucose as a representative reducing sugar and glycine as a representative free amino acid. They tested dissolved iron and manganese in anoxic conditions, and the minerals ferrihydrite (an iron oxyhydroxide) and birnessite (a manganese oxide) in oxic conditions. The incubations were conducted at 10 °C.
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In the reported experiments, mineral catalysts produced up to 100 times as much GPS as the catalyst-free control. The resulting compounds also had carbon and nitrogen spectral signatures resembling DOC and organic carbon in continental-margin sediments. This resemblance supports the possibility that Maillard-type geopolymerization contributes to sediment organic matter; it does not prove that the reaction is the sole source of persistent carbon in those sediments.
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 could generate approximately 4.1 teragrams of carbon per year (4.1 Tg C yr⁻¹) for preservation in marine sediments. This is a modeled potential contribution, not a global measurement of carbon burial attributable to the reaction.
The authors set that estimate beside an approximately 63 Tg C yr⁻¹ variation in sedimentary organic-carbon preservation over the past 300 million years. The comparison provides a sense of possible scale; it does not show that geopolymerization caused that long-term variation. Nor does the 4.1 Tg estimate quantify present-day atmospheric CO₂ removal: it concerns a modeled pathway for sediment carbon preservation, not a measured climate-removal outcome.
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How does geopolymerization compare with other preservation processes?
Carbon can persist in sediments through multiple interacting processes. Mineral sorption can bind DOC to or within minerals, potentially shielding it from degradation. Geopolymerization changes the molecules themselves, potentially making the resulting material less reactive. DOC hydrolysis, remineralization and sediment mixing also affect whether carbon remains preserved.
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A 2025 conceptual-mathematical model considered DOC hydrolysis, remineralization, sediment mixing, mineral sorption and geopolymerization together. When mineral-associated organic carbon was included, the model’s preservation efficiency was almost three times the conventionally defined burial efficiency. In its 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 percentages are model sensitivity or importance estimates, not measured shares of global carbon burial. The authors summarize their model by writing, “Kinetic sorption and transformation are the dominant controls on organic carbon preservation.” That conclusion describes the modeled system, rather than a universal observational law. Read the 2025 Nature Geoscience article.
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What the evidence establishes—and what it does not
- Laboratory mechanism: Iron and manganese species catalysed Maillard-type transformation of glucose and glycine at 10 °C under the tested oxic and anoxic conditions.
- Field relevance: Experimental product signatures resembled organic carbon in continental-margin sediments, a chemical resemblance consistent with the proposed pathway.
- Global contribution: The annual 4.1 Tg C estimate is a model output, not a direct tally of seafloor burial.
- Broader preservation: Modeling places geopolymerization alongside DOC cycling and mineral sorption; it does not establish that this one reaction dominates all marine carbon preservation.
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