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Published on: June 4, 2016
Free-living tube worm endosymbionts found at deep-sea vents
Tara L Harmer1, Randi D Rotjan, Andrea D Nussbaumer
1Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Abstract:
Recent evidence suggests that deep-sea vestimentiferan tube worms acquire their endosymbiotic bacteria from the environment each generation; thus, free-living symbionts should exist. Here, free-living tube worm symbiont phylotypes were detected in vent seawater and in biofilms at multiple deep-sea vent habitats by PCR amplification, DNA sequence analysis, and fluorescence in situ hybridization. These findings support environmental transmission as a means of symbiont acquisition for deep-sea tube worms.
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