Boiling-Water Worm - Hosts Bizarre Bugs     
By Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News
Recommended reading  by Naturalist,   Angie Lallas

Tue. 20, 2001 — An animal that can live in boiling water, making it the most extreme heat-loving
animal on the planet, is attracting the attention of industrial chemists and scientists, according to deep-sea
vent researchers.

Called the Pompeii worm, this bizarre creatures lives on the edges
of smoking-hot hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the Pacific
Ocean, said researcher Craig Cary at the meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco last
weekend. 

"This worm is straddling a huge thermal gradient," said Cary, a
professor at the University of Delaware. 

Unlike more famous giant tube worms that live a safe distance from
the 400 degree-centigrade vent water, the Pompeii worms live in
dense communities right at the edge of the vents — in water that
can hit and exceed 100 degrees centigrade. The violent water
movements also flush out the worms — tubes with water just two
degrees above freezing. 

Although little is known about the worm's life, it has been found to
have an extraordinary supply of primitive bacteria living on its back,
said Cary. The worm appears to secrete a compound that bacteria
impregnate and reinforce, creating a fleecy mane that might play
some part in protecting the worm from the boiling water. 

The bacteria, which belongs to a group called epsilon
Proteobacteria, don't belong to a single species, as is normal in this
sort of cooperative relationship between animals and bacteria, Cary
said. Instead, there is a virtual garden of different Proteobacteria
on Pompeii worm backs. 

"It's unprecedented," said Cary. 

The bacteria themselves are getting a lot of interest, Cary said.
Because the worms and their bacteria can survive extreme
tempatures, they must have enzymes that can handle the extremes
without being "cooked." 

That means they could be useful in industrial processes that use
very high temperatures — everything from paper milling, sewage
reclamation to food processing and laundry detergent. These little
bugs could change the formula and performance of common
products that we use every day, he said. 

These weird organisms highlight just how much there is to learn
from exploring deep sea vents, which are at this point largely
unknown, said deep sea biogeographer Cindy Lee VanDover of the
College of William and Mary. 

"We're still in an age of exploration," she said.

Boiling-Water Worm
Hosts Bizarre Bugs   

By Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News

Recommended by Naturalist, Angie Lallas

Tue. 20, 2001 — An animal that can live in boiling water, making it the most extreme heat-loving
animal on the planet, is attracting the attention of industrial chemists and scientists, according to deep-sea
vent researchers.

Called the Pompeii worm, this bizarre creatures lives on the edges
of smoking-hot hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the Pacific
Ocean, said researcher Craig Cary at the meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco last
weekend. 

"This worm is straddling a huge thermal gradient," said Cary, a
professor at the University of Delaware. 

Unlike more famous giant tube worms that live a safe distance from
the 400 degree-centigrade vent water, the Pompeii worms live in
dense communities right at the edge of the vents — in water that
can hit and exceed 100 degrees centigrade. The violent water
movements also flush out the worms — tubes with water just two
degrees above freezing. 

Although little is known about the worm's life, it has been found to
have an extraordinary supply of primitive bacteria living on its back,
said Cary. The worm appears to secrete a compound that bacteria
impregnate and reinforce, creating a fleecy mane that might play
some part in protecting the worm from the boiling water. 

The bacteria, which belongs to a group called epsilon
Proteobacteria, don't belong to a single species, as is normal in this
sort of cooperative relationship between animals and bacteria, Cary
said. Instead, there is a virtual garden of different Proteobacteria
on Pompeii worm backs. 

"It's unprecedented," said Cary. 

The bacteria themselves are getting a lot of interest, Cary said.
Because the worms and their bacteria can survive extreme
tempatures, they must have enzymes that can handle the extremes
without being "cooked." 

That means they could be useful in industrial processes that use
very high temperatures — everything from paper milling, sewage
reclamation to food processing and laundry detergent. These little
bugs could change the formula and performance of common
products that we use every day, he said. 

These weird organisms highlight just how much there is to learn
from exploring deep sea vents, which are at this point largely
unknown, said deep sea biogeographer Cindy Lee VanDover of the
College of William and Mary. 

"We're still in an age of exploration," she said.