How Bone-eating worm Inspired Chemosynthetic Bioprocessing

Osedax mucofloris · Animal · Deep ocean floor around whale falls

What if the solution to accessing otherwise indigestible nutrients had already been perfected — by a bone-eating worm (osedax) over 50 million years of evolution?

The Natural Innovation

Osedax worms have no mouth, gut, or digestive organs. Instead, they grow root-like structures into whale bones that secrete acid to dissolve the bone, releasing lipids and proteins. Symbiotic bacteria in the roots metabolize the nutrients and feed the worm — a completely different model of digestion.

The bone-eating worm (osedax) lives in Deep ocean floor around whale falls.

In the language of biomimicry, this falls under the Process › Use symbiosis for metabolism category.

The Design Principle

Outsourcing complex metabolic functions to specialized symbiotic microorganisms allows the host organism to access energy sources it could never process alone — a division-of-labor principle applicable to industrial bioprocessing.

Human Applications

Studying Osedax has advanced understanding of chemosynthetic symbiosis — how organisms outsource digestion to specialist microbes — informing deep-sea bioprospecting for novel enzymes and the design of synthetic microbial consortia that can break down otherwise intractable organic compounds in industrial bioprocessing.

Real-world implementations include: Acid-assisted composite recycling research, bioleaching processes for metal recovery.

Source: AskNature.org