Deep-sea worms drop acid to get dinner
Bone-eating worms produce chemicals to dissolve and feed on skeletons
Bone-eating worms, the deep-sea creatures that feed on whale skeletons and other bones, dissolve their dinner in an acid bath. Now scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., have pinpointed the worms’ acid-making machinery: Cells in the creatures’ rootlike bases are loaded with proteins that generate acid and pump it onto the bones.
The delicate, feathery-fronded creatures in the genus Osedax use acid to get at the nutritious collagen and fat in bone. But how these zombie worms generate the acid was a mystery. Dissections and lab tests suggest that that the worms make acid using chemistry involving the surrounding seawater and carbon dioxide produced during metabolism, scientists report May 1 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.