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Platynereis dumerilii is a small marine annelid worm that has been bred in laboratories for some time.
The worm has three characteristics. Firstly, it has the ability to rebuild body parts after an injury or amputation, although this is a common characteristic in the animal kingdom.
What is really interesting, however, is the second property that scientists have recently discovered with great enthusiasm: the worm has a kind of "3-D printer", it uses long hair extensions to function like the nozzles of a printer and parts of its bristles, even micrometer-sized particles, can be precisely renewed.
The worm can also "reprint" entire bristles, starting with the tip of the bristle, followed by the middle section and finally the base of the gland, whereby the parts renewed in this way are gradually pushed further and further out of the body.
Now the third aspect that makes the worm interesting is that it has very hard teeth, which get their hardness from metal ions.
This means that even very solid plant food particles pose no real problem for the small annelid worm.
Males and females have specific morphological characteristics related to sexual metamorphosis, especially their color. While juveniles are mainly brownish, females are bright yellow as they are filled with ova.
Males are white in their anterior part, as they are full of sperm, and red in the posterior part, indicating the extensive accessory blood capillaries.
Morphological differences between juveniles and maturing worms are not limited to their color.
In fact, during sexual maturity, the entire intestine of the worm regresses and the body of the animal is gradually transformed into a sac full of gametes.
In addition, adult worms have larger and darker eyes than juveniles.
Reference source:
Michel Vervoort, Eve Gazave. Studying Annelida Regeneration Using Platynereis dumerilii.
Simon Blanchoud; Brigitte Galliot. Whole-Body Regeneration. Methods and Protocols, 2450, Springer US,
pp.207-226, 2022, Methods in Molecular Biology, 978-1-0716-2171-4. 10.1007/978-1-0716-2172-1_11 hal-03628147
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Synonym: Nereis (Platynereis) dumerilii comata Ramsay, 1914
The worm has three characteristics. Firstly, it has the ability to rebuild body parts after an injury or amputation, although this is a common characteristic in the animal kingdom.
What is really interesting, however, is the second property that scientists have recently discovered with great enthusiasm: the worm has a kind of "3-D printer", it uses long hair extensions to function like the nozzles of a printer and parts of its bristles, even micrometer-sized particles, can be precisely renewed.
The worm can also "reprint" entire bristles, starting with the tip of the bristle, followed by the middle section and finally the base of the gland, whereby the parts renewed in this way are gradually pushed further and further out of the body.
Now the third aspect that makes the worm interesting is that it has very hard teeth, which get their hardness from metal ions.
This means that even very solid plant food particles pose no real problem for the small annelid worm.
Males and females have specific morphological characteristics related to sexual metamorphosis, especially their color. While juveniles are mainly brownish, females are bright yellow as they are filled with ova.
Males are white in their anterior part, as they are full of sperm, and red in the posterior part, indicating the extensive accessory blood capillaries.
Morphological differences between juveniles and maturing worms are not limited to their color.
In fact, during sexual maturity, the entire intestine of the worm regresses and the body of the animal is gradually transformed into a sac full of gametes.
In addition, adult worms have larger and darker eyes than juveniles.
Reference source:
Michel Vervoort, Eve Gazave. Studying Annelida Regeneration Using Platynereis dumerilii.
Simon Blanchoud; Brigitte Galliot. Whole-Body Regeneration. Methods and Protocols, 2450, Springer US,
pp.207-226, 2022, Methods in Molecular Biology, 978-1-0716-2171-4. 10.1007/978-1-0716-2172-1_11 hal-03628147
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Synonym: Nereis (Platynereis) dumerilii comata Ramsay, 1914
