The “devil worm” lurking in the depths of the Earth (and the mystery of how it got there)

In the early 2000s, Worm biologist Gaetan Borgonie, founder of the Extreme Life Isyensya research institute in Belgium, recalls that many senior scientists scoffed at the idea that anything more complex could exist deep beneath the Earth.

The first convincing reports of life deep underground had appeared a few years earlier.

Among them stood out the discovery, in 1997, of bacteria 2.8 km deep inside a drilling intended for gas extraction.

Borgonie believed that a group of small worms known as nematodes or roundworms could also exist in the depths

The idea was not fashionable in the scientific community, but Borgonie, aware of the extraordinary resistance of these tiny animals, considered it worth investigating.

In 2008, Borgonie joined forces with other experts in extreme life forms to visit the Beatrix gold mine, in South Africa.

Once in the depths of the mine, they accessed holes made in the walls to extract water at about 37°C contained within the rock and passed it through filters designed to capture small living organisms, recalls Borgonie.

After filtering more than 6,000 liters of water, they managed to capture a single, tiny worm.

In two other South African mines, they filtered even larger volumes of water, more than 12 million liters in one of them, and found a small number of different species of nematodes, along with other invertebrates, fungi and various microscopic life forms.

Most of these species can also be found in surface environments.

However, the worm found in the Beatrix mine, whose tail had been broken during the filtration process, was a species unknown to science and was named Halicephalobus mephisto.

For a nematode, a broken tail is equivalent to a death sentence.

Fortunately, that specimen was a female and, furthermore, it was parthenogenetic, that is, capable of reproducing on its own without the need to mate.

Before dying, she laid eight viable eggs, thus allowing offspring to be obtained.

Some of the descendants of this worm have terminated in the laboratory of John Bracht, a genomics researcher at American University, in the USA.

There they are raised in Petri glasses under conditions similar to those used for the cousin of the devil’s worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, a widely studied species of nematode that lives in decaying fruits.

However, there are some differences. The devil’s worm does not swim in water; instead, it adheres to the walls of plastic tubes, an ability that likely helps it cling to subsurface rocks.

An important aspect is that the devil’s worm does not thrive at room temperature. At 20°C, its growth slows down and it takes up to eight days to complete its life cycle.

In contrast, it prefers temperatures of 37°C, conditions that are normally lethal to Caenorhabditis elegans, but in which the devil’s worm comfortably reproduces every two days.

Study a species based solely on the descendants of a single individual is complicated, especially when those descendants have remained away from their natural habitat for a long time.

Still, Bracht has managed to identify some clues as to how this worm manages to survive deep underground.

When he and his collaborators sequenced the DNA of the devil worm in 2019, they discovered an unusually high number of genes responsible for producing heat-shock proteins. in English), molecules that protect other proteins from damage caused by extreme temperatures.

More recently, in 2024, Bracht’s team examined in detail another molecule called complex IV, essential for the consumption of oxygen and the maintenance of vital processes.

Through a series of experiments, Bracht verified that the complex Devil Worm IV only works efficiently at elevated temperatures.

At room temperature, the molecule is deactivated, slowing energy production.

This explains why these worms are so slow and inactive when under these conditions.

Bracht hypothesizes that this mechanism Disconnection could be a survival strategy.

“They are making sure that they reproduce more in the environment that is most favorable to them, which would be the warmest,” he explains.

Currently, he is also investigating whether the devil worm’s parthenogenetic reproductive strategy constitutes another survival tool.

Since these worms can very rarely encounter other individuals of the same species in the vast expanses of the underground world, this type of asexual reproduction could sometimes be the only way they have to produce offspring.

Bracht speculates on the possibility that males of the devil worm exist, which would allow some sexual reproduction when individuals come to be found, although so far none have been discovered.

In any case, these worms demonstrate an extraordinary capacity for adaptation.

“Any place where there is a food source and there is the possibility of animals getting there, nematodes will evolve to occupy that niche,” he says.

How these life forms got there remains a mystery.

Research carried out by Borgonie and geobiologist Cara Magnabosco, from the ETH in Zurich (Switzerland), suggests that at least some nematodes descend from surface environments transported by water, perhaps favored by the consequences of seismic activity.

On the other hand, many of the bacteria could have remained there for much longer.

A study published in 2021 by geomicrobiologist Maggie Lau and her team, from the China Institute of Deep Sea Science and Engineering, revealed that the bacterium Desulforudis audaxviator, found in deep underground environments on three different continents, had a practically identical genetic composition in all cases, despite the fact that it has never been detected on the Earth’s surface.

Lau and his colleagues estimate that this bacteria could have remained in the Earth’s crust since the breakup of the supercontinent Pangea, which began approximately 165 million years ago, when dinosaurs still dominated the planet.

And even if a life-killing asteroid were to hit Earth and completely sterilize the surface, life could re-emerge from the organisms that live deep underground.

“As human beings, we think we rule the world, but we don’t,” says Van Heerden.

“Understanding that these organisms have been here for millions, if not billions, of years and that they will be here long after we are gone has been a lesson of enormous humility for me,” concludes the expert.

The “devil worm” lurking in the depths of the Earth (and the mystery of how it got there)

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By Editor

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