Many properties of denitrifying anaerobic methane oxidation (DAMO) bacteria have been explored since their first discovery, while DAMO archaea have attracted less attention. Since nitrate is more abundant than nitrite not only in wastewater but also in the natural environment, in depth investigations of the nitrate-DAMO process should be conducted to determine its environmental significance in the global carbon and nitrogen cycles. This review summarizes the status of research on DAMO archaea and the catalyzed nitrate-dependent anaerobic methane oxidation, including such aspects as laboratory enrichment, environmental distribution, and metabolic mechanism. It is shown that appropriate inocula and enrichment parameters are important for the culture enrichment and thus the subsequent DAMO activity, but there are still relatively few studies on the environmental distribution and physiological metabolism of DAMO archaea. Finally, some hypotheses and directions for future research on DAMO archaea, anaerobic methanotrophic archaea, and even anaerobically metabolizing archaea are also discussed.

自首次发现反硝化厌氧甲烷氧化（DAMO）细菌以来，已经探索了许多特性，而DAMO古细菌却受到了较少的关注。由于硝酸盐不仅在废水中而且在自然环境中都比亚硝酸盐丰富，因此应对硝酸盐-DAMO工艺进行深入研究，以确定其在全球碳和氮循环中的环境意义。综述了DAMO古细菌及其催化的硝酸盐依赖性厌氧甲烷氧化的研究现状，包括实验室富集，环境分布和代谢机理等方面。结果表明，适当的接种量和富集参数对于培养物富集以及随后的DAMO活性至关重要，但是关于DAMO古细菌的环境分布和生理代谢的研究还相对较少。最后，还讨论了关于DAMO古细菌，厌氧甲烷营养型古细菌甚至厌氧代谢古细菌的一些假设和未来研究的方向。