Have you heard of sea termites? Scientists still don't know why they were able to digest wood

Shipworms, also known as "chiseled shells", belong to the family Ofbranchia, suborder Poor-toothed, and ship maggots. mollusca. Shaped like a worm, it has a slender body and burrows in wood. They are greedy wood chewers. For thousands of years, these "sea termites" have caused ships to sink and docks to collapse.

Today, we still don't know how they were able to devour so much woody plant material at such a rapid rate.

Reuben Shipway, a microbiologist at the University of Portsmouth in the UK, said: "It's incredible. "

"The ancient Greeks wrote about them, Christopher Columbus lost his fleet because of 'the destruction caused by bugs,' and, today, ship maggots cause billions of dollars in damage each year."

However, they are still full of mysteries. In contrast to wood-eating animals on land, such as termites, they have been largely overlooked by scientists. As a result, we know very little about the ability of these marine organisms to digest woody materials.

The ability to digest wood is often associated with microorganisms, but is actually a ship maggot of saltwater clams that have only recently been found to possess surprisingly sterile offal. While their gills can send enzymes to digest cellulose when needed, the researchers couldn't figure out how the bivalves removed lignin, the sugar of wood embedded in "concrete."

Unlike wood-eating animals on land, such as termites and earthworms, ship maggots do not appear to treat lignin in the same way. They lack the enzymes that break down this tough material.

Stefanos Stravoravdis, a microbiologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said: "I combed through the entire genome of 5 species of ship maggots, looking for specific proteomes that create enzymes that we know are capable of digesting lignin. Nothing was found. ”

Therefore, this remains a mystery.

Nor have previous studies found any known enzymes that break down lignin — only those that break down cellulose.

Although enzymes are not the only way organisms process woody materials. Take the Gribe worm, another type of marine crustacean that drills wood, which does not use enzymes to break down lignin. Instead, the Gribe worm secretes hemocyanin in its intestines, a protein that makes lignin more porous and allows other enzymes to penetrate and break down the cellulose inside.

Some fungi also use non-enzymatic strategies. For example, brown rot fungi supplement small amounts of intestinal enzymes with a range of reactive oxygen species that break down lignin faster than enzymes.

Maybe maggots have similar skills. We just didn't study it too little.

Although these marine crustaceans are no longer harmful, they remain an important player in the ecosystem. They are worth knowing, especially since their digestive systems can inspire us to build greener forms of energy.

Currently, obtaining biofuels from surplus wood is an expensive and inefficient process. However, it is possible to learn something new from animals and fungi.

The study was published in Frontiers in Microbiology.

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-havoc-caused-by-shipworms-remains-a-mystery-after-thousands-of-years