Nice #openaccess review on the ecology of chemosynthetic symbioses from @chicaScientific & Guus Roeselers

Figure 1 from 10.1007/s00253-011-3819-9. Sediment cross section 

exposing the characteristic Y-shaped burrow dug by S. velum. 

Positioning itself at the triple junction of the Y, the bivalve alternates

 between actively pumping oxygenated water from the upper arms of

 the burrow through the mantle cavity and across the gills and 

accessing reduced sulfur compounds diffusing up from the anoxic 

zones below and pumped through a ventral incurrent opening in the 

mantle. Scale bar equals 2.5 cm

For those who do not know, I got my first taste of microbiology research when I was an undergrad at Harvard and I did my senior/honors research project in the lab of Colleen Cavanaugh. Colleen studied (and in fact still studies) symbioses between invertebrates and chemosynthetic bacteria. The bacteria basically allow these invertebrates to function like plants in many ways. Some of these invertebrates (like the giant tube worms in hydrothermal vents) have lost their mouths and digestive systems and basically live by bringing in high energy chemicals for their symbionts which then make sugars, vitamins, amino acids and other goodies for the host.

NPR Piece on Discovery of Hydrothermal Vent Oasis

Very nice to see this: The Deep-Sea Find That Changed Biology : NPR

It discusses the story of the discovery of the first hydrothermal vent oases back in 1977. I note this is near and dear to my heart. I worked as an undergraduate and then after graduating in Colleen Cavanaugh's lab at Harvard on chemosynthetic symbioses. And then amazingly I got to go on the 2002 deep sea cruise celebrating the 25th anniversary of the discovery of the vents. On that cruise Rosebud (mentioned in this article) was discovered.

Hydrogen as a fuel? No this is not about cars, this is about animals and their symbionts in the deep sea

As many of you know, I generally avoid writing about non open access publications here.  But occasionally I make exceptions.  And I am making one today.  There is a wicked cool paper out in Nature today.  Entitled "Hydrogen is an energy source for hydrothermal vent symbioses" comes from Nicole Dubilier, Jillian Petersen and others.  It is about my favorite ecosystem(s) on the planet - hydrothermal vents.  I became interested in these vents in 1989 when I met Colleen Cavanaugh who at the time was a Junior Fellow at Harvard.  She told me about her work on bacteria that live inside tubeworms, clams and other creatures in the deep sea that are key to the lives of these animals.  The bacteria are chemosynthetic (i.e., they use the energy of chemicals to drive carbon fixation).  The animals have either no digestive systems or very degenerate ones and the bacteria function much like chloroplasts do for plants.  The bacteria basically make everything for their hosts while the hosts collect energy (chemicals in this case) and oxygen and CO2 for the microbes.

After hearing Colleen tell me about her work on these symbioses and how at the time nobody knew much about the symbionts, I joined her new lab at Harvard (she was just appointed as a junior professor) and worked in her lab in my Senior year and after graduating (and ended up publishing my first paper on symbionts of a clam Solemya velum).  I have been captivated by symbioses ever since.  So much so that many years later I worked with Colleen, Irene Netwon, Tanya Woyke, Dongying Wu and others to sequence and analyze the first genome of any of the chemosynthetic symbiotic bacteria.