All kinds of animals , including people , rely on gut bug for digestion . Now , researchers have found a novel digestive strategy in Ellen Price Wood - eat maritime bivalves ( Bankia setacea ) known as shipworms : Their helpful bacteria live in their branchia . Thefindings , published inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesthis workweek , show how bacteria outside of the catgut – and not in direct contact with the food item – recreate a critical character in digestion .
“ You do n’t discover about the breakthrough of new digestive strategies very often,”Daniel Distel from Northeastern Universitysays in auniversity statement . “ It just does n’t happen . ”
teredinid ( which are really worm - looking clams , not technically worms ) are the termites of the sea , and like those sign of the zodiac - eating insects , shipworms depend on their microbial helpers to break down problematical lignocellulose for nutrition and nourishment . According to the U.S. Department of Energy , shipworms leave alimentation channels in 2,000 - year - old Greek and Roman ships , ruined Christopher Columbus ’s fourth trip to the Caribbean , instigated flooding of the Netherlands in the 18th and nineteenth centuries , and caused $ 15 million in damages to San Francisco pier around 1920 . It took the advent of copper color sheathing to slow down their destruction of naval vessels .
But oddly , there are no bacterial endosymbionts living in their guts . Rather , the bacterium live within specialized cells in their gill , and the woods - degrade enzyme they bring forth are selectively transported to a neighborhood of the teredinid ’s gut where woods digestion come about .
“ No other animal in the humans is known to rely on bacterium outside of its digestive system to develop its digestive enzyme , ” Distel says in aDOE release , “ and no other intracellular bacterium is known to produce enzymes that function in the away earth of the boniface . ”
Distel and colleagues sequenced the genomes of the gill bacterium and identified nearly 1,000 different genes involved in breaking down plant topic . Then they searched the shipworm gut and found 45 of these same genes as well as the proteins that were encode in the genomes of the gill bacterium .
The selective translocation of enzymes also suggest that the wide-eyed teredinid system is equal to of identifying relevant enzyme and their combinations . " These enzymes plow out to be somewhat complex proteins , made up of several participating module that are link to each other,“Distel tells Washington Post . These bits are configured into different combinations in ordination to improve procedure . " Other organism do this , but these bacteria seem to take it to an extremum , " he adds . But why this whole gill - to - gut long length relationship ? This scheme of distant enzyme production likely allows shipworm to capture liberated lolly from wood without competition from in - sign gut microbe .
Once the team identified the enzyme involved in get around down Grant Wood into sugars in the gut , they had a tilt of candidate for commercially - viable enzymes that would be improbably utile for industries that convert plant biomass into renewable fuel , paper products , and even food .
Images : Wilson44691via Wikimedia ( top ) , Dan Distel , Ocean Genome Legacy Center of New England Biolabs via DOE ( middle )
