Ship worms are very omnivores for wood, and they have been causing shipwrecks and destruction of docks for thousands of years, and they still cause billions of dollars in damage annually, and scientists have neglected these worms for a long time, so we still do not know how these sea creatures digest a lot of plant matter Wood at this crazy speed!

Recently, a team of scientists from Goodell Laboratory (Department of Microbiology) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the United States, and the Center for Enzyme Innovation (Institute of Biological and Biomedical Sciences) at the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom attempted to answer this historical question in a study published on July 12. In Frontiers in Microbiology.

“We combed the complete genomes of 5 different species of symbiotic bacteria that live in the gills of the shipworm for specific protein groups that create the The enzymes we know are capable of digesting lignin (a complex chemical compound most often extracted from wood, which makes up about a quarter to a third of the dry mass of wood), and our research has yielded nothing."

Scientists have tried to solve the mystery of the ability of shipworms to digest wood with such insane speed.

Termites

Shipworms are not actually worms, but rather an exceptional group of obligate oysters that live in salt water, have very small shells, and are known for digging and smashing wooden structures submerged in seawater, such as docks, ports and wooden ships, and they are sometimes called "ants." The White Sea, a bivalve marine mollusk, also known as the Trido worm.

Shipworms have a long criminal history, destroying Christopher Columbus' ships, bringing down the Spanish Armada, collapsing the docks of San Francisco, and endangering the British Barmouth Bridge, causing it to close in 1980.

However, unlike other wood-eating creatures on the ground - such as termites - shipworms do not seem to treat lignin in the same way, because they lack the enzymes that normally break down this tough substance.

Ship worms caused many disasters, including endangering the Barmouth Bridge in 1980 (David Rustance-Flickr)

Scientists believed that this problem, which was a major challenge in the age of wooden boats, was behind a partner in crime, and because some microbes possess enzymes capable of digesting lignin, scientists have long believed that the symbiotic bacteria that live in the gills of shipworms contain these enzymes, which are that help her to do the work.

The thing that puzzled scientists is that the nutritious part of the wood that the worm targets is cellulose, and it is usually covered with a very thick layer of lignin that is difficult to digest, that is, it is similar to the shell of a very thick and unbreakable egg, and the question was how the worm could break it?

Holes made by shipworms in fossil conifer wood from the Cretaceous period (James St. John-Flickr)

How do shipworms eat wood?

According to the article published on ScienceAlert, all previous research has failed to identify any enzymes known to break down lignin, and research so far is still unable to unravel the devastation caused by these mysterious worms after thousands of years.

"We need more research into non-enzymatic or other unknown mechanisms of lignin digestion, to understand how shipworms eat wood, and we will publish more research in the near future, which can help solve this puzzle," Strafuravidis says.