“Riftia” is a deep sea vent tubeworm that has no mouth or digestive tract. Rather, it hosts billions of symbiotic bacteria that provide them nutrition.
Wildly, they are among the fastest growing organisms on the planet! Our paper examines *how* they pull this off.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Co-expression analysis reveals distinct alliances around two carbon fixation pathways in hydrothermal vent symbionts - Nature Microbiology
Live tubeworm incubations reveal that chemoautotrophic symbionts regulate the Calvin–Benson–Bassham and reductive tricarboxylic acid pathways to suit geochemistry and metabolism.
