“To grow these copper-toothed stomach jaws, which last through the worms’ entire five-year lifespan, bloodworms harvest the metal from marine sediments on the seafloor. Then, through a previously unknown chemical reaction, the worms fuse the copper to their jaws.”

https://www.livescience.com/bloodworms-fangs-origins

One issue with discussions about metals is whether the metal is in elemental form, or as a compound. The title suggests the copper is elemental, but the article seems to suggest otherwise. However, it remains unclear to me. I'm not aware of any lifeform that biologically produces metallic elements, though I imagine copper would be fairly easy to produce, at least from an electrochemical standpoint.

53 minutes ago, KJW said:

One issue with discussions about metals is whether the metal is in elemental form, or as a compound. The title suggests the copper is elemental, but the article seems to suggest otherwise. However, it remains unclear to me. I'm not aware of any lifeform that biologically produces metallic elements, though I imagine copper would be fairly easy to produce, at least from an electrochemical standpoint.

Dead right. The actual paper is here: https://www.cell.com/matter/fulltext/S2590-2385(22)00153-9?utm_source=EA

from which it can be see that this is Cu²⁺, acting as a binding agent by complexing with 4 imidazole units. The key structure appears to be shown here:

Looks like another case of lazy journalism, leading to a misleading impression that these things have Jaws-like metal teeth when they don't. I'm not sure what "totally metal" is supposed to mean, but "containing 10% copper ions" wouldn't be as clickbaity.

Edited January 17Jan 17 by exchemist

Yeah, it does seem that the journalist kind of missed the point. There was a (I found) a more interesting study looking at rodent enamel, different intergranular phases were found in beavers, where (IIRC) a more amorphous calcium (or perhaps magnesium?) phosphate phase and a more resilient iron oxide phase is formed, which have different deminralization characteristics. The effect of this is that the outer, metal containing layers weather more slowly, thus maintaining a sharp edge.

I thought the characterization of bloodworms as " very disagreeable worms in that they are ill-tempered and easily provoked," could be attributing more emotional complexity to that species than is really there. (If we were talking badgers, then maybe those would be useful descriptors) An interesting look at biochemistry that incorporates transition metal into tooth enamel.

17 hours ago, TheVat said:

I thought the characterization of bloodworms as " very disagreeable worms in that they are ill-tempered and easily provoked," could be attributing more emotional complexity to that species than is really there. (If we were talking badgers, then maybe those would be useful descriptors) An interesting look at biochemistry that incorporates transition metal into tooth enamel.

According to Wiki these worms concentrate Cu in their bodies to a surprising degree, as it would normally be toxic. I wonder if this adaptation may be related to them living in mud and thereby being exposed to a lot of minerals from finely divided sediments.