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Calvin-Benson cycle and sulphide oxidation enzymes in animals from sulphide-rich habitats

Abstract

The role of sulphide oxidation-driven production of reduced carbon in the nutrition of animals adapted to life in sulphide-rich habitats such as the deep-sea hydrothermal vents and intertidal mudflats has been a topic of recent interest1–4. Chemoautotrophic sulphide-oxidizing bacteria have been isolated from samples of sulphide-rich vent water5–8, and it has been suggested that these could provide a food source for filter-feeding animals that live at the vents. The recent discovery of prokaryotic cells9 and activities of sulphide-oxidizing enzymes (which generate reducing power and ATP) and Calvin—Benson cycle enzymes10 within the trophosome tissue of the large vestimentiferan tubeworm of the vents, Riftia pachyptila Jones (Phylum Pogonophora)11 suggests that sulphide-oxidizing chemoauto-trophic bacteria exist in a symbiotic relationship with at least this vent species. This discovery led us to measure enzyme activities associated with sulphide oxidation, the Calvin-Benson cycle and nitrate reduction in a variety of other vestimentiferan tube-worms and bivalve molluscs which occur in sulphide-rich habitats. All the vestimentiferan worms and several of the molluscs were found to contain these enzymatic activities, suggesting that the putative animal-bacterial symbiosis first described in Riftia pachyptila may be of widespread occurrence in species living in environments offering simultaneous access to sulphide and oxygen.

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Felbeck, H., Childress, J. & Somero, G. Calvin-Benson cycle and sulphide oxidation enzymes in animals from sulphide-rich habitats. Nature 293, 291–293 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1038/293291a0

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