PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

The two-thousand-year-old mystery of the havoc-wreaking worm

New research reveals that we know less about the history-altering shipworm than we thought

The two-thousand-year-old mystery of the havoc-wreaking worm
2021-07-13
(Press-News.org) AMHERST, Mass. - Humans have known for over two thousand years that shipworms, a worm-like mollusk, are responsible for damage to wooden boats, docks, dikes and piers. Yet new research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst published in Frontiers in Microbiology reveals that we still don't know the most basic thing about them: how they eat.

"It's unbelievable," says Reuben Shipway, adjunct assistant professor in microbiology at UMass Amherst, research fellow at the Centre for Enzyme Innovation at the University of Portsmouth, UK, and one of the paper's authors. "The ancient Greeks wrote about them, Christopher Columbus lost his fleet due to what he called 'the havoc which the worm had wrought,' and, today, shipworms cause billions of dollars of damage a year."

Shipworms also play a key role in mangrove forest ecosystems, found throughout the world's tropical regions, and are responsible for cycling a huge amount of carbon through the web of life. "Yet," says Shipway, "we still don't know how they do what they do."

Part of the problem is that the nutritious part of wood - cellulose - is encased in a thick and extremely difficult-to-digest layer of lignin. "Imagine a really thick, unbreakable eggshell," says senior author and UMass professor of microbiology, Barry Goodell.

Certain fungi possess enzymes capable of digesting the lignin, and it has long been thought that symbiotic bacteria living in shipworms' gills also had the enzymes. "We thought that the bacteria were doing the work," says Goodell, "but we now know they are not."

Researchers are still trying to figure out what within the shipworm could be responsible for breaking down the lignin. "I combed through the entire genomes of five different species of shipworm," says Stefanos Stravoravdis, the paper's lead author and a graduate student in microbiology at UMass, "looking for specific protein groups which create the enzymes that we know are capable of digesting lignin. My search turned up nothing."

This, however, is not the end of the story, and the team will be publishing more research in the near future that will help unravel the mystery of how shipworms eat wood. "We need to understand this process" says Stravoravdis.

INFORMATION:

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation; National Institute of Food and Agriculture; U.S. Department of Agriculture; the Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment; and the UMass Amherst microbiology department.

Contacts: Barry Goodell, bgoodell@umass.edu
Daegan Miller, drmiller@umass.edu


[Attachments] See images for this press release:
The two-thousand-year-old mystery of the havoc-wreaking worm

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Eating whole grains linked to smaller increases in waist size, blood pressure, blood sugar

2021-07-13
Middle- to older-aged adults who ate at least three servings of whole grains daily had smaller increases in waist size, blood pressure, and blood sugar levels over time compared to those who ate less than one-half serving per day, according to new research. Published July 13, 2021, in the Journal of Nutrition, the study by researchers at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University examined how whole- and refined-grain intake over time impacted five risk factors of heart disease: Waist size, blood pressure, blood sugar, triglyceride, and HDL ("good") cholesterol. Using data from the Framingham Heart Study Offspring ...

How well do consumers understand their dairy purchases?

2021-07-13
Philadelphia, July 13, 2021 - Consumers may have less trust in food processes that they don't understand, and animal-based foods may be subject to more uninformed scrutiny than other foods due to consumers' perception of higher risk. Dairy producers can benefit from understanding how consumers interpret unfamiliar terms and claims on dairy product labels. In a new END ...

COVID-causing coronavirus following predictable mutational footsteps

COVID-causing coronavirus following predictable mutational footsteps
2021-07-13
New research from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has shown that the mutations arising in the COVID-19-causing SARS-CoV-2 virus seem to run in the family -- or at least the genus of coronaviruses most dangerous to humans. After comparing the early evolution of SARS-CoV-2 against that of its closest relatives, the betacoronaviruses, the Nebraska team found that SARS-CoV-2 mutations are occurring in essentially the same locations, both genetically and structurally. The mutational similarities between SARS-CoV-2 and its predecessors, including the human-infecting SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV, could help inform predictions of how the COVID-causing virus will continue to evolve, the researchers ...

Taming the Huntington's disease proteome: Mass spectrometry may provide answers

2021-07-13
Amsterdam, July 13, 2021 - Mass spectrometry has emerged as an important analytical tool for gaining a better understanding of mechanisms underlying Huntington's disease (HD), alongside the increased availability of cell and animal models of the disease. This END ...

What you say in the first minute after a vaccine can be key in reducing a child's distress

2021-07-13
YorkU pain research finds what you say in the first minute after a vaccine can be key in reducing a child's future distress New study finds it's not just what say, but when you say it that can keep preschoolers calmer during vaccinations TORONTO, July 13, 2021 - As we look forward to a fall with hopefully one of the most important vaccination uptakes of children in a generation, a new study provides insights to help parents with reducing post-vaccination distress in younger kids. The study, published in END ...

US-wide, non-white neighborhoods are hotter than white ones

US-wide, non-white neighborhoods are hotter than white ones
2021-07-13
WASHINGTON--In cities and towns across the United States, neighborhoods with more Black, Hispanic and Asian residents experience hotter temperatures during summer heatwaves than nearby white residents, a new study finds. It is the first to show that the trend, documented in some major cities, is widespread, even in small towns, nationwide.   According to the new nationwide study, these racial disparities exist because non-white neighborhoods tend to be more densely built up with buildings and pavement that trap heat and have fewer trees to cool the landscape.    "Urban climate is different from temperatures outside the city," said co-author Susanne Benz, an ...

Are silver nanoparticles a silver bullet against microbes?

Are silver nanoparticles a silver bullet against microbes?
2021-07-13
Antimicrobials are used to kill or slow the growth of bacteria, viruses and other microorganisms. They can be in the form of antibiotics, used to treat bodily infections, or as an additive or coating on commercial products used to keep germs at bay. These life-saving tools are essential to preventing and treating infections in humans, animals and plants, but they also pose a global threat to public health when microorganisms develop resistance to them, a concept known as antimicrobial resistance. One of the main drivers of antimicrobial resistance is the misuse and overuse of antimicrobial agents, which includes silver nanoparticles, ...

Study: Racial/ethnic and language inequities in ways patients obtain COVID-19 testing

2021-07-13
The COVID-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented disruption to health care delivery, with resources shifted toward telehealth services and mass viral testing. While early studies in the pandemic highlighted differences in health care utilization among patients with commercial insurance, data from publicly insured or uninsured "safety-net" patient populations continue to emerge. A recent study from researchers at the University of Minnesota and Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute (HHRI) is among the first to examine how different socio-demographic groups used telehealth, outpatient (i.e., clinic), emergency department and inpatient (i.e., hospital) care to test for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. ...

Higher-order topological superconductivity in monolayer Fe(Te,Se)

Higher-order topological superconductivity in monolayer Fe(Te,Se)
2021-07-13
In particle physics, a Majorana Fermion is charge neutral and its antiparticle is just itself. In condensed matter physics, a Majorana zero mode (MZM) is a quasi-particle excitation, which appears in the surfaces or edges of topological superconductors. Unlike the ordinary particles or quasi-particles that obey boson or fermion statistics, MZM obeys non-abelian statistics, a key property that makes MZM the building block for realizing topological quantum computation. Currently major experimental efforts focus on heterostructures made of superconductors and spin-orbit coupled systems (such as semiconducting nano-wires and topological insulators), where evidences of MZMs have been found. Unambiguous detection and manipulation of MZMs in these heterostructures, ...

Mosquito-resistant clothing prevents bites in trials

2021-07-13
North Carolina State University researchers have created insecticide-free, mosquito-resistant clothing using textile materials they confirmed to be bite-proof in experiments with live mosquitoes. They developed the materials using a computational model of their own design, which describes the biting behavior of Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that carries viruses that cause human diseases like Zika, Dengue fever and yellow fever. Ultimately, the researchers reported in the journal Insects that they were able to prevent 100 percent of bites when a volunteer wore their clothing - a base layer undergarment and a combat shirt initially designed for the military - in a cage with 200 live, disease-free mosquitoes. Vector Textiles, an NC State startup company, ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Researchers reveal evolutionary path of important proteins

Insilico Medicine presents progress of 5 novel AI cancer drugs at AACR

Study finds benefits in prescribing alcohol use disorder medications upon discharge from alcohol-related hospitalizations

USC Schaeffer Center study finds few hospitals promoting potentially predatory medical payment products

Mandatory standards for the indoor environment would result in immense benefits to the health and productivity of people around the world

Chickadees have unique neural “barcodes” for memories of stashing away food

Chickadees are memory geniuses. Their barcode-like neural activity may be to thank

Tiny orchid flowers pollinated by tiny flies

Researchers develop AI-based tool paving the way for personalized cancer treatments

Reports of COVID-19 vaccine adverse events in predominantly republican vs democratic states

Patient out-of-pocket costs for biologic drugs after biosimilar competition

New Brigham research highlights combining prostate MRI with a blood test to avoid unnecessary prostate biopsies

Scientists discover a key quality-control mechanism in DNA replication

Lipids with potential health benefits in herbal teas

Synergically improved energy storage performance and stability in sol–gel processed BaTiO3/(Pb,La,Ca)TiO3/BaTiO3 tri-layer films with a crystalline engineered sandwich structure

International collaboration enabled participatory stock assessment on glass eel fisheries in West Java, Indonesia

Enhanced melanoma vaccine offers improved survival for men

Nearly one-third of patients with TBI have marginal or inadequate health literacy

Genetic causes of cerebral palsy uncovered through whole-genome sequencing

Modesty and boastfulness – perception depends on usual performance

Do sweeteners increase your appetite? New evidence from randomised controlled trial says no 

Women with obesity do not need to gain weight during pregnancy, new study suggests

Individuals with multiple sclerosis face substantially greater risk of hospitalisation and death from COVID-19, despite high rates of vaccination

Study shows obesity in childhood associated with a more than doubling of risk of developing multiple sclerosis in early adulthood

Rice Emerging Scholars Program receives $2.5M NSF grant to boost STEM education

Virtual rehabilitation provides benefits for stroke recovery

Generative AI develops potential new drugs for antibiotic-resistant bacteria

Biofuels could help island nations survive a global catastrophe, study suggests

NJIT research team discovering how fluids behave in nanopores with NSF grant

New study shows association of historical housing discrimination and shortfalls in colon cancer treatment

[Press-News.org] The two-thousand-year-old mystery of the havoc-wreaking worm
New research reveals that we know less about the history-altering shipworm than we thought