Space muscles study to use tiny worms

5 April 2018

Thousands of baby worms will be sent into space later this year to help a study into muscle loss in older people.

Scientists at the University of Exeter in Devon say nematodes are being used because they have a similar muscle structure to humans.

Astronauts lose about 40% of muscle mass after 180 days while onboard the International Space Station (ISS).

Researchers hope the research could help people with conditions including muscular dystrophy and diabetes.

The worms - a nematode species called Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) - will blast off in a rocket from the Kennedy Space Centre, Florida, on 29 November and travel 250 miles (402km) to the ISS.

They are useful to scientists studying long-term changes in human physiology because they suffer from muscle loss under many of the same conditions that people do.

Colleen Deane, a researcher at the University of Exeter, said muscles weakened in space due to a lack of gravity.

Read on  

Worm genomes reveal a link between ourselves and our distant relatives

Decoding two worm genomes provides new insights into genetic similarities between distantly related animal groups

Date:  December 4, 2017

Source:  Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) Graduate University

If you were to visit a marine biology lab at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), you might find strange-looking worms squirming in petri dishes, their elongated bodies expanding and contracting. You may also be surprised to find that you have quite a lot in common with these humble creatures.

Continued 

Ancient crayfish and worms may die out together

Research suggests that bizarre, tentacled worms which live attached to crayfish in the rivers of Australia are at risk of extinction - because the crayfish themselves are endangered.

It would be an example of coextinction, where one organism dies out because it depends on another doomed species.

Just a few millimetres long, the worms eat even tinier critters in the water or inside the crayfish gill chamber.

Their symbiotic relationship stretches back at least 80 million years.

The new findings, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, map out that shared history based on genetic analysis of 37 different species of spiny mountain crayfish and their "temnocephalan" flatworm passengers.

"We've now got a picture of how these two species have evolved together through time," said Dr Jennifer Hoyal Cuthill from the University of Cambridge.

She and her colleagues conclude that it was some 80-100 million years ago that these two types of animal started to evolve together.

The Australian continent was about halfway through its gradual northward march to its current position on the globe and as it progressed, the creatures' habitat started to fragment and shrink.

Read on … 

Worms hitch rides on slugs when traveling to far flung places

Slugs provide essential public transport for small worms in the search for food

Date: July 12, 2015

Source: BioMed Central

Summary: Slugs and other invertebrates provide essential public transport for small worms in the search for food, according to new research.

Slugs and other invertebrates provide essential public transport for small worms in the search for food, according to research published in the open access journal BMC Ecology.

Nematode worms (including Caenorhabditis elegans) are around a millimeter long and commonly found in short-lived environments, such as decomposing fruit or other rotting plant material. The worms face a high level of unpredictability in these environments as temperature and food availability fluctuate, and frequently need to move to new locations. However, little is understood on how such a small animal with limited mobility is able to travel long distances to find new food.

Continued ...

Why is it raining worms in Norway? Bizarre weather phenomenon sees creatures fall from the sky across the south of the country

Teacher Karstein Erstad found thousands of live worms on top of the snow

There have been reports of worm rainfall in Norway following his report 

Mr Erstad says the 'very rare phenomenon' happened in Sweden in 1920s

By JENNY STANTON FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 18:49, 16 April 2015 | UPDATED: 20:48, 16 April 2015

Thousands of live earthworms have been falling from the sky in Norway - a rare phenomenon being reported across large swathes of the south of the country.

A biology teacher discovered the worms on the surface of the snow while he was skiing in the mountains near Bergen at the weekend.

Numerous reports have been coming in after he told his story, and there have been sightings of worm rainfall.

Teacher Karstein Erstad told Norwegian news website The Local: 'When I found them on the snow they seemed to be dead, but when I put them in my hand I found that they were alive.'

Initially he thought they had wiggled their way through the snow, but dismissed this when he realised it was up to a metre deep in some places.

Read more: 

Dolphins, diatoms and sea dragons join census of all known marine life

Near-complete tally lists more than 220,000 species and deletes 190,400 duplicates.

Daniel Cressey

12 March 2015

Taxonomists undertaking the daunting task of compiling a list of every species in the sea say that there are 228,445 known marine organisms. The team from the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) has eliminated 190,400 previously listed species, because they were duplicate identities.

WoRMS, hosted by the Flanders Marine Institute in Belgium, has more than 200 editors around the world combing through the published literature to tally what lives under the waves. In its latest update, published on 12 March, the organization said that it had added 1,451 creatures in 2014 alone. Jan Mees, the director of the Flanders Marine Institute and WoRMS co-chair, says that after a decade of work, the team has "nearly completed the inventory of all marine organisms that have ever been seen and described". The world's oceans are thought to contain somewhere between 700,000 and 1 million eukaryote species, however, so WoRMS has plenty more work to do.

Among the additions since 2008 are the Australian humpback dolphin (Sousa sahulensis). Originally proposed as a separate species in 2013 on the basis of skull and tissue analysis1, this animal was formally named last year2.

Continued ...

'Killer sperm' prevents mating between worm species

Date:

July 29, 2014

Source:

University of Maryland

Summary:

Most cross-species mating is merely unsuccessful in producing offspring. However, when researchers mated Caenorhabditis worms of different species, they found that the lifespan of the female worms and their number of progeny were drastically reduced compared with females that mated with the same species. In addition, females that survived cross-species mating were often sterile, even if they subsequently mated with their own species.

Continued

Pesticides threaten birds and bees alike, study says 12 hours ago

Neurotoxic pesticides blamed for the world's bee collapse are also harming butterflies, worms, fish and birds, said a scientific review that called Tuesday for tighter regulation to curb their use.

Analysing two decades of reports on the topic, an international panel of 29 scientists found there was "clear evidence of harm" from use of two pesticide types, neonicotinoids and fipronil.

And the evidence was "sufficient to trigger regulatory action".

"We are witnessing a threat to the productivity of our natural and farmed environment," said Jean-Marc Bonmatin of France's National Centre for Scientific Research, co-author of the report entitled the Worldwide Integrated Assessment.

Read more at:

Strict diet suspends development, doubles lifespan of worms

Date:

June 19, 2014

Source:

Duke University

Summary:

Taking food away from C. elegans triggers a state of arrested development: while the organism continues to wriggle about, foraging for food, its cells and organs are suspended in an ageless, quiescent state. When food becomes plentiful again, the worm develops as planned, but can live twice as long as normal.

Continued

Predatory Fungi Are Listening for Worms, Then Devouring Prey

Dec. 13, 2012 — For over 25 years, Paul Sternberg has been studying worms -- how they develop, why they sleep, and, more recently, how they communicate. Now, he has flipped the script a bit by taking a closer look at how predatory fungi may be tapping into worm conversations to gain clues about their whereabouts.

Nematodes, Sternberg's primary worm interest, are found in nearly every corner of the world and are one of the most abundant animals on the planet. Unsurprisingly, they have natural enemies, including numerous types of carnivorous fungi that build traps to catch their prey. Curious to see how nematophagous fungi might sense that a meal is present without the sensory organs -- like eyes or noses -- that most predators use, Sternberg and Yen-Ping Hsueh, a postdoctoral scholar in biology at Caltech, started with a familiar tool: ascarosides. These are the chemical cues that nematodes use to "talk" to one another.

"If we think about it from an evolutionary perspective, whatever the worms are making that can be sensed by the nematophagous fungi must be very important to the worm -- otherwise, it's not worth the risk," explains Hsueh. "I thought that ascarosides perfectly fit this hypothesis."

Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121213145257.htm

Doctor Pulls 5 Inches Live Worm From Man's Eye

The patient suffered pain for more than two weeks before he decided to go to the doctor because of eye irritation. He did not expect to experience a scene from a horror movie - from his eye was removed live worm 5 inches (13cm) long!


When Dr V. Seetharaman examined 75-year-old patient P.K. Krishnamurthy at Mumbai's Fortis Hospital this week, the eye expert was shocked by the highly unusual sight of the writhing parasite and had to operate speedily to remove it before serious damage was caused. Seetharman stated afterwards that: “It was wriggling there under the conjunctiva. It was the first time in my career of 30 years that I had seen such a case.”


The eye specialist removed the parasite in a 15-minute operation, making a small incision in the conjunctiva (the thin membrane around the eye) while Saraswati, the patient’s wife, looked on in horror.

According to doctor, there was a possibility that the worm, before it entered the bloodstream and to the eye, enters through a cut in the patient's foot or from eating raw or poorly cooked food.

The 5 inch long parasitic worm was alive for 30 minutes following the surgery, and was sent to the hospital’s microbiologists for identification.


Continued:  http://www.incredipedia.info/2012/07/doctor-pulls-5-inches-live-worm-from.html

Tiny alcohol amounts double worm's life

Tiny portions of ethanol, the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, can more than double the lifespan of a tiny worm known as C elegans.

The worm, found in soils, where they eat bacteria, is used frequently as a model in aging studies, according to University of California Los Angeles biochemists.

"This finding floored us - it's shocking," said Steven Clarke, a California professor of chemistry and biochemistry.

In humans, alcohol consumption is generally harmful, Clarke said, and if the worms are given much higher concentrations of ethanol, they experience harmful neurological effects and die, other research has shown.

Clarke's research team - Paola Castro, Shilpi Khare and Brian Young - studied thousands of these worms in the first hours of their lives, while they were still in a larval stage.

The worms normally live for about 15 days and can survive with nothing to eat for roughly 10-12 days. "Our finding is that tiny amounts of ethanol can make them survive 20 to 40 days," Clarke said.

The scientists fed the worms cholesterol, and the worms lived longer, apparently due to the cholesterol. They had dissolved the cholesterol in ethanol, often used as a solvent, which they diluted 1,000-fold.

"It's just a solvent, but it turns out the solvent was having the longevity effect," Clarke said.

"The cholesterol did nothing. We found that not only does ethanol work at a 1-to-1,000 dilution, it works at a 1-to-20,000 dilution.

"That tiny bit shouldn't have made any difference, but it turns out it can be so beneficial.

"The concentrations correspond to a tablespoon of ethanol in a bathtub full of water or the alcohol in one beer diluted into a hundred gallons of water," Clarke said.


http://www.phenomenica.com/2012/01/tiny-alcohol-amounts-double-worms-life.html

Liquid-living worms survive space

Worms have survived their first space mission in liquid form.

The result, published in a Royal Society journal, means worm colonies can be established on space stations without the need for researchers to tend to them.

The animals are helping scientists understand the effects of weightlessness and high radiation levels experienced in space.

Lessons learned could one day assist humans to explore the Solar System.

In 2001, Stephen Hawking is reported to have said: "I don't think the human race will survive the next 1,000 years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars."

But space is no easy amble. Humans must first learn to cheaply and safely propel themselves into space regularly, and then, once there, must adapt to high levels of radiation and to weightlessness.

In preparation for longer spaceflight, scientists have designed shields to deflect harmful energetic particles, and continue to study the ill-effect of weightlessness on astronauts.

The gravity studies have mostly focused on a group of muscles - broadly known as anti-gravity muscles - that seem to deteriorate without the gravitational pull of the Earth. However, there is some evidence for the weakening in all muscles, including the hearts of astronauts.

Weightlessness not only sees animals use their muscles less, but causes changes in the chemical reactions within the muscle cells, explained Nathaniel Szewczyk from the University of Nottingham, who is the lead author on the new study in the journal of the Royal Society Interface.

Read more here ...

Hunter Lost For 5 Days Ate Worms To Survive

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- A man who became separated from his friends in dense forest during a squirrel hunting trip in western Tennessee says he ate worms and drank muddy water to survive five days in the wild before he was found.

Bill Lawrence said he gathered rainwater in his hunting vest and tried to stay calm throughout his ordeal. Authorities say they conducted the longest search in decades in the 13,000-acre Meeman Shelby Forest State Park before the man was discovered Sunday.

"This is when I got turned around," said Lawrence, a corrections officer, adding he tried in vain to find his friends or their truck.

At the time he became separated, Lawrence was clad in camouflage pants and jacket, a hat and snake boots.

His friends reporting him as missing. Searchers used trained dogs, horses, all-terrain vehicles, boats, police vehicles and helicopters as they scoured the thick woods.

Meanwhile, Lawrence kept walking, searching for food and water.

"I was drinking muddy water ... eating worms. Yeah, I'd seen that on TV. I ate worms."

Lawrence said he had a shotgun, 15 shells, 2 bottles of water, a flashlight, a can of bug spray, a squirrel call and a can of dipping tobacco. But he did not have a cell phone to summon help.

He shot his gun whenever he thought he heard someone, but his shotgun shells ran out on Saturday.

"Everything was against him from the very beginning," Park Manager Steve Smith said, noting the helicopter spotters had difficulty peering into the dense forest canopy and searchers were hampered by extreme heat.

Messages left by The Associated Press at the park office for Smith were not immediately returned. A telephone listing for Lawrence couldn't be located.

Lawrence eventually reached a road on Sunday. It was about three miles from where he started out, but Lawrence estimated that he had covered about 35 miles by then.

Lawrence said he collapsed and was found by some passers-by.

"Man I was happy," he said. "I laid down in that road and just sat there. ... By then I was just wore out."

Authorities said Lawrence suffered from dehydration and severe insect bites. He was taking antibiotics because of the things he ate in the forest.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/08/hunter-lost-for-5-days-at_n_954439.html

Animal's genetic code redesigned (via Dawn Holloway)

Researchers say they have created the first ever animal with artificial information in its genetic code.


The technique, they say, could give biologists "atom-by-atom control" over the molecules in living organisms.

One expert the BBC spoke to agrees, saying the technique would be seized upon by "the entire biology community".

The work by a Cambridge University team, which used nematode worms, appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The worms - from the species Caenorhabditis elegans - are 1mm long, with just a thousand cells in their transparent bodies.

What makes the newly created animals different is that their genetic code has been extended to create biological molecules not known in the natural world.

Genes are the DNA blueprints that enable living organisms to construct their biological machinery, protein molecules, out of strings of simpler building blocks called amino acids.

Just 20 amino acids are used in natural living organisms, assembled in different combinations to make the tens of thousands of different proteins needed to sustain life.

Expanded palette
But Sebastian Greiss and Jason Chin have re-engineered the nematode worm's gene-reading machinery to include a 21st amino acid, not found in nature.

Dr Chin of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology (where Francis Crick and James Watson first cracked the structure of DNA) describes the technique as "potentially transformational": designer proteins could be created that are entirely under the researchers' control.

The development builds on techniques first developed at the Scripps Research Institute, in La Jolla, US, where Dr Chin worked 10 years ago.

The genetic code comes in four DNA letters, A,C,G and T; the genetic machinery reads it in words three letters long, called codons, which stand for the individual amino acid blocks to be built into a growing protein.

At Scripps, researchers showed in a paper in PNAS how one of those three letter words could be re-assigned, so that cells would read it as an instruction to incorporate an unnatural amino acid, one not normally found in living organisms. But that was in the bacterium E. coli; until now, no one had succeeded in doing the same in a whole animal.

Jonathan Hodgkin, professor of genetics at Oxford University, welcomes the new development, saying it "creates exciting new opportunities for research on C. elegans".

New tricks
Closer to home, Dr Mario de Bono, an expert on C elegans, who is also at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, predicts "this sort of news travels like wildfire" among research biologists, adding that the method could be applied to a wide range of animals.

So far it is just a proof of principle - the artificial protein that is produced in every cell of the nematode worm's tiny body contains a fluorescent dye that glows cherry red under ultraviolet light. If the genetic trick failed, there would be no glow.

But Dr Chin says any artificial amino acid could be chosen to produce specific new properties. Dr de Bono suggests the approach could now be used to introduce into organisms designer proteins that could be controlled by light.

Indeed, the two are planning to collaborate on a detailed study of neural cells in the nematode brain, aiming to activate or deactivate individual neurons in precise ways with tiny laser flashes.

Dr Chin rather modestly admits he's "incredibly pleased" to have succeeded in a project he had avoided until a year and a half ago, for fear that other well-established competitors would get there quicker.

On the other hand, Dr de Bono compares the invention with the Nobel-prize winning work on green fluorescent protein, which are now part of the standard kit in biology labs across the world.


By Roland Pease

BBC Radio Science
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14492948

Walking cactus discovered in China

Walking cactus: Scientists have discovered what researchers are calling the missing link in China. The strange-looking walking cactus is thought to be the link between worm-like creatures and arthopods like spiders.

By Wynne Parry, LiveScience / February 25, 2011

Fossils of a 10-legged wormy creature that lived 520 million years ago may fill an important gap in the history of the evolution of insects, spiders and crustaceans.

The so-called walking cactus belongs to a group of extinct worm-like creatures called lobopodians that are thought to have given rise to arthropods. Spiders and other arthropods have segmented bodies and jointed limbs covered in a hardened shell.

Before the discovery of the walking cactus, Diania cactiformis, all lobopodian remains had soft bodies and soft limbs, said Jianni Liu, the lead researcher who is affiliated with Northwest University in China and Freie University in Germany.

"Walking cactus is very important because it is sort of a missing link from lobopodians to arthropods," Liu told LiveScience. "Scientists have always suspected that arthropods evolved from somewhere amongst lobopodians, but until now we didn't have a single fossil you could point at and say that is the first one with jointed legs. And this is what walking cactus shows." [Image of walking cactus fossil]

Leggy find

Liu and other researchers described the extinct creature based on three complete fossils and 30 partial ones discovered in Yunnan Province in southern China. The walking cactus had a body divided into nine segments with 10 pairs of hardened, jointed legs, and it measured about 2.4 inches (6 centimeters) long.

It's not clear how the leggy worm made its living. It could have used its tube-like mouth called a proboscis to suck tiny things from the mud, or it may have used its spiny front legs to grab prey, Liu said.

Clues to arthropod evolution are preserved in modern-day velvet worms, which are considered the only living relative to all arthropods. Once mistaken for slugs, these land-dwelling worms are almost entirely soft-bodied except for hardened claws and jaws.

Where spiders, insects and others came from

The discovery of the walking cactus helps fill in the evolutionary history between the velvet worms and modern arthropods, which, in terms of numbers and diversity, are the most dominant group of animals on the planet, according to Graham Budd, a professor of paleobiology at Uppsala University in Sweden, who was not involved in the current study.

The walking cactus is the first and only case of hardened, jointed limbs built for walking appearing in a creature that is not recognizable as an arthropod, Budd said.

But Budd is not convinced that, as the researchers argue, the walking cactus's hardened legs were passed directly down to modern arthropods.

"I am not persuaded that it is a direct ancestor or as closely related to living arthropods as they suggest," he told LiveScience. "I would like to see more evidence; the great thing is a lot more material keeps coming up."
For instance, it is possible that the walking cactus is less closely related to modern arthropods, and that hardened legs evolved multiple times. It is also possible that the bodies of primitive arthropods hardened before their legs did, Budd said.

New fossils, particularly from China, have helped clarify the evolutionary history of arthropods, and in the last decade or so, scientists have come to more consensus regarding that history, he added.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/0225/Walking-cactus-discovered-in-China

Kremlin fury over worm salad tweet

A regional governor is in hot water in Russia after posting on Twitter that he had found a worm in a salad served at the Kremlin.

Dmitry Zelenin has been branded "idiotic" for posting the message accompanied by a photograph showing the worm, reports the BBC.

"That's an original way to show that the lettuce leaf is fresh," he tweeted.

But the Kremlin was not amused, and top foreign policy adviser Sergei Prikhodko accused Mr Zelenin of "irresponsibility and stupidity".

"I should probably have advised my lawyer colleagues to add to the list of formulae for assessing governors' performance a provision for 'dismissal on the grounds of imbecility'," he said.

"I would advise anyone who wants to invite Mr Zelenin as a guest to think hard before doing so."

Mr Zelenin's Twitter account no longer carries the message or the photograph of the salad, which was apparently served at a state dinner for German President Christian Wulff.

But Russian bloggers picked up the story and have begun to publish images they say were taken from the original tweet.

Anatoly Galkin, the Kremlin's head chef, told Russian media the worm claims were "nonsense".

All dishes served in the Kremlin "go through a very careful examination" before reaching the table, he said.


http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/Kremlin_fury_over_worm_salad_tweet

Scientists find rare oasis of life on floor of Yellowstone Lake

Monday, October 4, 2010

Montana State University researchers have discovered a rare oasis of life in the midst of hundreds of geothermal vents at the bottom of Yellowstone Lake.

A colony of moss, worms and various forms of shrimp flourishes in an area where the water is inky black, about 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and a cauldron of nutrients, gases and poisons, the researchers reported in the September issue of Geobiology.

The vent is close to 100 feet below the surface of Yellowstone Lake and a third of a mile offshore in the West Thumb region. The worms and shrimp live among approximately two feet of moss that encircles the vent.

"This particular vent seemed unique relative to all other active vents thus far observed in the lake in that it is robustly colonized by plants," the researchers wrote.

The team explored the lake bottom with a Remotely Operated Vehicle built by the same person who built a much larger rover for exploring the Titanic. The MSU team was led by John Varley in the Big Sky Institute and Tim McDermott and Bill Inskeep in the Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences and MSU's Thermal Biology Institute.

The researchers said that the Fontinalis moss is not known to grow in the conditions they found on the floor of Yellowstone Lake and that a worm found associated with the moss had never been reported in North America. The researchers also noted that this was the first in-depth published study of the biology associated with any geothermal vent in Yellowstone Lake.

"The proliferation of complex higher organisms in close association with a Yellowstone Lake geothermal vent parallels that documented for deep marine vents, although to our knowledge this is the first such documentation for a freshwater habitat," the researchers wrote in Geobiology.

The vent is evidently responsible for the moss being able to live in what humans perceive as total darkness, but these plants obviously have the ability to somehow find and use very low light, Varley said. At times, the scene around the vent looks like it belongs in a snow globe because of a beige-colored silica and aluminum mineral that flies out of the vent and settles on the moss, which further lessens the ability of the moss to acquire light that is essential for it to photosynthesize. Key to the survival, indeed proliferation, of this moss in this unusual environment are the nutrients contained in the vent water. The nutrients feed the moss, which feed the shrimp and worms. The vent water also contains toxins such as arsenic and cadmium. It's super-saturated with carbon dioxide, hydrogen and other gases.

"If there are gases of that type anywhere else in Yellowstone, it follows that there would be life that has been introduced and evolved there that uses those resources," Varley said.

The researchers explored the bottom of Yellowstone Lake from onboard the R/V Cutthroat, a National Park Service boat, Varley said. Using a map created by Lisa Morgan with the U.S. Geological Survey, they noted that the lake contains hundreds of active and dormant vents. Scientists have mapped the lake bottom three times over the last 136 years, but studies of the biology around the vents have been extremely limited.

The vents are mostly on the northern half of the lake, inside the Yellowstone caldera, and span from the West Thumb region to Mary Bay. The lake bottom is probably the third largest geothermal field in the park. It is estimated to contribute 10 percent of the total geothermal output in the park, as well as 15 percent of the water that's in Yellowstone Lake, Varley said.

Despite the geothermal activity, the lake is "still one cold son of a gun," Varley said, noting that the waters' surface rarely gets above 64 F.

Researchers used a Remotely Operated Vehicle specially designed for the task by Dave Lovalvo of Eastern Oceanics Research. About half the size of a household refrigerator, the ROV is much smaller than the ROVs he built for exploring deep ocean environments, but it can do most of the same sampling, Lovalvo said. ROV's for deep ocean exploration can range from 1,000 pounds to almost 10,000. The ships that carry them are typically 225 to 300 feet long. The ROV for Yellowstone Lake weighed about 250 pounds. The R/V Cutthroat is about 28 feet long.

"I'd like to think that this (ROV) has and will continue to assist the National Park Service and the public in not only better understanding this truly amazing place, but also preserving it for future generations," said Lovalvo, who has been involved in Yellowstone research for 25 years.

Although he built rovers to explore the Titanic; the PT-109 boat made famous by former President John F. Kennedy; and features deep in the ocean, Lovalvo said he is committed to Yellowstone.

"Yellowstone is a very unique environment and one of the few places in the world where one can compare an inland, hydrothermally active lake to an active volcanic area of the ocean," he said.

The study produced other results that will be the focus of future scientific papers, Varley said. The researchers are currently writing five papers about their findings.

The Geobiology paper compared each vent to an island with its own chemistry and conditions. Future research may focus on genetic communication between those islands, Varley said.

Other MSU team members on the Yellowstone project were Rich Macur in the Inskeep lab; Scott Clingenpeel, a postdoctoral researcher with McDermott; and Stephanie McGinnis, a conservation biologist with the Big Sky Institute. Team members from elsewhere were Lovalvo; Janice Glime from Michigan Technological University and K. Nealson from the University of Southern California and the JC Venter Institute in California.

Yellowstone National Park is required to document the park's biodiversity, and the broader study being conducted by MSU at least doubles the list of organisms known to live there, Varley said. He added that understanding how the colony lives in such extreme conditions may lead to the development of new products and inventions.

One example of a Yellowstone organism leading to an industrial product is Thermus aquaticus, a heat-resistant micro-organism discovered in a Yellowstone hot spring in the 1960s. Subsequent research on Thermus aquaticus led to today's modern DNA testing -- a multi-billion dollar industry.

The project at the bottom of Yellowstone Lake has already benefited public school teachers and National Park Service employees who helped conduct field work that contributed to the study, Varley said. Not only did they learn field techniques, but they will share their experiences and scientific findings with students and park visitors.

Varley, who used to work for the National Park Service and ended his NSP career as director of the Yellowstone Center for Resources, said he started inventorying the park's biodiversity in 2003. Now a senior scientist at the Big Sky Institute, Varley said the study that led to the current discoveries began in 2004 as a pilot project. Field work continued in 2008 and 2009, with each field season lasting about 10 days during the fall. The ROV was used during the pilot season and both field seasons.

"What we do is impossible without the ROV," Varley said. "There is no other feasible way to do the work."

###

Montana State University: http://www.montana.edu Thanks to Montana State University for this article.

http://www.labspaces.net/106790/Scientists_find_rare_oasis_of_life_on_floor_of_Yellowstone_Lake

Girl vomited two-metre parasitic worm, archives reveal

Medic's account is one of more than 1,000 Royal Navy journals made accessible to the public from today

The Guardian, Thursday 30 September 2010

A 12-year-old girl required medical treatment after vomiting a 220cm-long worm as she sailed to a new life in Canada in the 19th century, documents revealed today.

Ellen McCarthy was a passenger on board the Elizabeth ship taking emigrants from Cork in Ireland to Quebec when she fell ill, expelling three worms in total.

Her unusual case was described by the ship's surgeon, P Power, in June 1825. The medic's account is one of more than 1,000 Royal Navy medical officer journals made accessible to the public after a two-year cataloguing project at the National Archives in Kew.

Power's notes state: "Complained yesterday evening of pain in the bottom of the belly increased on pressure, abdomen hard and swollen, picks her nose, starts in her sleep, bowels constipated, pyrexia, tongue foul, pulse quick, skin hot, great thirst. Her mother brought me a lumbricus [worm] this morning 87in long which the patient vomited."

The naval surgeon treated the girl with a range of syrups and injections including barley water and brandy punch. But he singled out oil of "terebouth" (thought to refer to the turpentine tree) for having the greatest effect. Two days later, on 15 June, she was "very ill and feverish" and Power gave her a laxative which he said prompted the patient to pass a "great quantity of slimey matter".

Her condition gradually improved in a "pleasing" manner and on 29 June, Power stated she was "convalescent".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/sep/30/girl-vomited-two-metre-parasitic-worm
(Submitted by Tim Chapman)

Worm charming festival fails to catch a single specimen

Crowds who attended a worm charming festival were left disappointed after contestants failed to tempt a single creature out of the ground.

By Murray Wardrop
Published: 8:30AM BST 07 Aug 2010

Dozens of competitors converged on a field in Lincolnshire for the sport which involves trying to lure as many worms as possible out of the earth within a 30-minute period.

But while the world record stands at 567, not one of the entrants at the Woodhall Worm Charming Festival managed to persuade a single invertebrate to vacate its underground lair.

The dismal performance was not matched by the enthusiasm of those taking part. While many traditionalists used the tried and tested method of “twanging” – whereby a four-pronged garden fork is inserted into the ground and vibrated by hand – others played instruments and experimented with homemade contraptions.

One contestant repeatedly honked his patch of grass with a vuvuzela, while another wheeled a spiked roller called “the worminator” across the ground. One team even used an electric back massager to coax out their prey.

At the close of the contest, one entrant said: “I feel wormthless.” Another added: “No worms, but we think they were just under the surface.”

With no clear winner, organisers were forced to modify the judging criteria and awarded the trophy to Team Green for being the Most Enthusiastic Charmers of the event.

The dire result follows the World Worm Charming Championships in Nantwich, Cheshire, earlier this summer which regularly sees entrants luring hundreds of creatures to the surface.

Event organiser Toni Franck said: “I can’t believe it because in Cheshire, even in their worst year, the winner took 40 worms – the best was more than 500. But we didn’t see a single worm here.”

Rules stipulate that contestants are not allowed to use water or dig worms out of the ground.

The event raised more than £200 for the Woodhall Spa Twinning Association.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7931029/PLEASE-PIC-AND-PUBLISH-Worm-charming-festival-fails-to-catch-a-single-specimen.html