 Good day everyone. Welcome to our program that explores and discusses discoveries and new knowledge in our midst. The new discovery featured today is a genus species of shipworms that was found in the waters of Mabini Batangas located 128 km south of Manila. It was named Tamilocus Mabinia. The scientists who discovered it chose Tamilocus as the genus name based on the local name of shipworms, which is Tamiloc. Traditionally, the species name can be based on the locality where it was found, and in this case, in Mabini, or it could be named after an important person, in this case, in honor of our national hero, Apolinario Mabini. Shipworms are wood-eating bivalds from the family Theredinae, and finding a new genus is very rare. Tamilocus is the only second-new genus described in this family for almost 100 years. As pointed out by Dr. Rubenshipway, a post-doctoral research scientist of the ocean genome legacy of Torch Eastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, and part of the Philippine Mollus Symbion International Cooperative by Diversity Group. This is the second-new shipworm genus described as Zachisa in 1933. Shipworms as a whole have a wide-ranging economic and ecological impacts in coastal marine systems. Here to tell us more about this exciting discovery is the head of the Marine Natural Products Laboratory at the University of the Philippines Marine Science Institute and an academician of the National Academy of Science and Technology and former vice president for academic affairs of the University of the Philippine System. She and her team have been studying Tamiloc since 2009 under the program funded by the United States National Institutes of Health, the Fogarty International, the US National Science Foundation, and the US Department of Energy. She will share with us and expound further about Tamiloc's Mabinia. So, let us welcome Dr. Gisela P. Concepcion or Giselle as she is known to many. Hello, Ben. Thanks for that nice introduction. Indeed, it is a pleasure and a privilege to have this discussion with you about the Tamiloc's Mabinia. Gisela, can you tell us about your involvement with the Philippine Mollusk Symbion International Cooperative Bidiversity Group? Ben, I am the associate program leader of the Philippine team of the Philippine Mollusk Symbion International Cooperative Bidiversity Group or PMSICBG for short. We are based at the UP Dilliman Marine Science Institute or MSI. Working with me are younger scientists in UP like Lili Beth Salvador Reyes of MSI and Aaron Villaraza of the Institute of Chemistry. Our team consists of many young graduate students and researchers who work in our labs and are also given the opportunity to train intensively in the labs of our foreign collaborators. Among my researchers from MSI, there is one that I'd like to mention, Marvin Altamia, who has devoted his life to studying shipworms. Marvin works exceptionally well with my foreign collaborators and he is a co-author of our paper. So can you describe what the PMSICBG is? PMSICBG has four major goals. First, to pursue basic research on Philippine Mollusk Bidiversity and Mollusk Microbe Symbiosis because we have a mega-diversity of mollusks in our country. Second, to discover bioactive compounds as potential drugs from the microbes associated with the mollusks for various conditions for pain, aging, infections, and cancer. Third, to provide scientific training and capacity building in the Philippines and fourth, to foster conservation of bioresources in the Philippines. PMSICBG is a consortium or collaboration of one Philippine academic institution, that's MSI, and five U.S. academic institutions. The University of Utah, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia which is part of Drexel University, the Ocean Genome Legacy in Northeastern University, and the Oregon Health and Science University. Our principal investigator, or PI, is Margo Haygood of Utah, known for her expertise on marine microbiology and symbiotes. Aside from Margo, scientists involved in this particular discovery are the world's expert on shipworms, dandislavogl, the world's expert on mollusk and taxonomy, Gary Rosenberg of A&SP, and others in our group are the renowned Philippine biochemist Baldomero Totoolivera and the natural products chemist Eric Schmidt both from the University of Utah who we are discovering new bioactive compounds. I understand that you are one of the writers of the research paper about this new discovery. Can you share us the purpose of the paper? In this paper to be published in the journal Pierre Jay in the next few days, we are describing a newly discovered genus and species of a clam, or bivalve, that we found in sunken driftwood in the waters of Balayan Bay off the coast of Mabini in Batangas. Could you tell us what shipworms are? Where in the Philippines are they usually found? Could you also tell us why you're interested in studying and describing shipworms and why people should be interested in this research about shipworms? Shipworms look like worms, but they are not worms. They are worms or bivalves, a kind of mollusk just like oysters and mussels. They bore holes on ships and thus their name shipworms. They borrow on wood. They are known as the termites or anay of the sea. In the Philippines, local folk call them tamilok We chose the name tamilokus mabinia for this new shipworm that we found in Mabini Batangas. Tamilok is known as an exotic food or delicacy in many parts of our country like Palawan, Quezon, the Visayas and Mindanao. Once, we documented the kinds of tamilok recipes prepared in homes and restaurants in Infanta Quezon from kilawin to cook dishes. As you might recall that in early 2017, our PMS ICBG group made a big international splash when we published our studies in Pinas, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. On the biggest, longest shipworm in the world known as kufus palitalamia and some said it was monstrous. Kufus had been known to exist for centuries but was never seen alive until now. Kufus was found in a sulfidic muddy lake in Sultan Kudarat in Mindanao. Aside from our other interesting findings about kufus including its material symbiote, kufus is also a food delicacy eaten by the local folk and nutritional, medicinal and aphrodisiac properties are being attributed to kufus. However, these claims would require further scientific investigation. Aside from their food value, we are interested in shipworms because they are interesting unique organisms with ecological and economic importance. They are wood borrowing and wood eating animals. They are able to break down the cellulose in wood into glucose as a source of food and energy. And that is because they have associated bacteria in their gills which produce a suite of enzymes called cellulases. By processing wood debris, they release food and energy stored in submerged wood and driftwood and thus they play a fundamental role in carbon recycling and transferring terrestrial energy from wood to the wider marine environment. This tunneling effect creates niches for other small organisms to grow and thrive. And so they are ecologically important being able to modify shallow marine and brackish environments and they have significant impacts on the biodiversity of a coastal marine ecosystem. Shipworms are economically important. They can be destructive to any unprotected and untreated wooden constructions submerged in marine water such as wooden ships, harbor buildings and piles, piers, jettees, warves, fishing equipment and even aquaculture pens. And this is estimated to cost damage and losses all over the world worth billions of dollars. As an example of great economic impact we can tell you how shipworms helped turn the tide of history. It is said that the Spanish Armada fleet was defeated by the British Empire fleet centuries ago because the Spanish ships were infested with shipworms and so they sank easily. Because of their ecological and economic importance I think the discovery of Mabinia is an exciting development in the fields of marine science. Shipworms can be explored for industrial uses. There are few animals that can break down cellulose and would as efficiently as shipworms and termites. The cellulases they produce can be used for waste recycling, biomaterials, processing and the biofuel industry such as a bioethanol production which relies on glucose. There is another reason we are studying shipworms and it is related to our other goal in our research program which is to discover new bioactive compounds produced by the bacteria associated with mollusks. It turns out that the bacteria found in the gills of the shipworms aside from producing cellulases also produce bioactive organic small molecules that we could explore as treatment for infections, cancer, pain and neurodegenerative conditions associated with aging. And so we are excited about this discovery because every new genus and species of shipworm with its own unique biology would likely have its own unique bacterial community. And this could provide us new sources of new compounds to develop as drugs. Bottom line, Benji, is it is truly fascinating to discovering new genus and species as you know to see a product of nature and evolution that one has never seen before. This is telling us indeed that the Philippines is the center of marine mollusk biodiversity in the world as it is the center of all marine biodiversity in the world and don't we know it? Yes, those are very interesting insights. But can you share us with some findings of your study and also discuss aspects of the methods that they use? I believe some of them are very technological. As a biodiversity and biogeography scientist Benji, you know that taxonomy is how we study our biodiversity and evolution. And so our approach here is what we call integrative taxonomy. So when we were young and growing up, we knew about classical taxonomy that's based on morphology. So especially for mollusks, it's so easy to distinguish them based on their shell morphology. But nowadays, that's not enough. And so we resort to other high value taxonomic characters aside from morphological features. We want to look at anatomical features. And we also want to look at their genetics. Or we look at their phylogenetics. So these are now the ways we identify genera, genus and species for all classes of organisms, whether plant, animal or microbial. But in particular, the shipwrims are very challenging and therefore interesting in terms of taxonomy. Because for one, they have what you call degenerate shells or calcareous parts. And in fact, the shipwrims are soft-budded. And they have a huge visceral mass that kind of clouds their different organs and anatomic parts. And so well actually they're like 16 genera so far. And so this is the 17th after how many decades now or almost 100 years. And let me say that this is where technology that involves high resolution instrumentation helps us even in documenting and conserving our biodiversity. So in this paper we report for the first time the use of what we call micro CT. We're familiar with that. Because it's already reported in the literature. It stands for micro computed tomography. So in hospitals we know that we have an element that we want diagnosed or we want to have an executive checkup and oftentimes we are asked to have an MRI or a CT scan. So this is something very similar. So it's the same principle. And it relies on very powerful instrumentation. And the instruments get better and better in terms of the resolution. And what's been done here is to make use of a micro, not just a mini but a micro CT scan. That's suitable for the size of the tamilokus or shipworms. In this case this shipworm is long. By taking photos or images of the organism of the shipworm in any direction or in any plane that you wish you're able to build a 3D virtual model of the organism. And that's so important. Why? Because we only had nine specimens that we collected from Mabini. This is in Balayan Bay. So Mabini is a coastal town of Balayan Bay. Let me backtrack about what else is important in terms of the method. So we got the specimen and we are able to have a photograph of it, an accurate one and we don't have to sacrifice or destroy so many of the specimens. We choose the best ones or even the partial specimens and do the imaging but we reserve the best specimen as the holotype and then we have some paratypes and we are depositing these irreputable museums in the world including the Philippine National Museum when it's ready after renovation. At the Marine Science Institute but then let me backtrack to the critical sample collection part of the methods and for that first of all our government requires that we get permits from them. So my group is an expert in getting the right permits for biodiversity studies and it's not just one kind of permit it's several permits prior informed consent of the local community the gratuitous permit from the DAB FAR and then we have an MOU with them and we have to renew this every year so we have all of those in place. And then we have our team of our graduate students researchers and led by us and our foreign collaborators who go to the field and set up a bio lab and we bring all our equipment storage facilities aquarium tanks as well as our microscopes our dissecting tools as well as our hammers to the field. So now let me tell you how this particular Tamil locus was collected so our researchers went diving and snorkeling and then they just went to about two meters deep or even less and they were specifically looking for logs big logs and they found a two meter one but it was a log that had been damaged so that was their cue that the log was not intact it had like holes or obviously some animals had been borrowing on the wood so when they found that then they brought it up and brought it to our lab near the shore and then started hammering at the wood because their cues or hints that there are shipworms living inside and sure enough with the hammers and lots of things that can break up wood they're able to find live animals there and they carefully extracted the Tamil locus from the barbos and then prepared them for documentation and for preservation so we're complete with our good digital microscopes and cameras in the labs and then of course we had to make decision of what's going for formalin preservation but then you want to be able to preserve it properly so the final medium is not formalin it's ethanol 70% you know that right but then there's another part that we need to do and that is the genetics so we have to get some material fresh to get the DNA extracted properly and preserve and that's 100% ethanol and then afterwards all the you know the imaging could be done properly because we prepared and preserved our whole specimens correctly for the genetics we did the standard one so the DNA bar coating is either CO1 or in some cases it would be if it's bacterial 16S this one it is the small 18S subunit and the large 28S subunit of our RNA genes and then we concatenated the sequences and compared it with the sequences that's out there in GenBank now what else is involved because this is an identification definitive identification project then let's see how we are able to contrast and compare this particular shipworm which already said hey this looks like at the very least a new genus but it could be a new genus because of some unique properties of the palets it was pinkish and it was pinstripe so they never saw that never saw that before so then we had to get samples of other genera of shipworms from a reputable museum so we got it from the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology and you know the famous genera are from the time that Ruth Turner studied them we have our bankia we have our bactronophors and we also have those in the Philippines and of course we have the kufus and others which are more closely related to this like unique or weird looking shipworm that we had never seen before so in the paper you will see that the comparison of this tamilokus is with genera that are probably most closely related to it in the phylogenetic tree so this is what you call integrative taxonomy you try to look at the genetics you try to look at the morphological and the anatomic features okay what this revolutionary technology micro CT is able to do for us is to be able to just use small material to come up with a genus identification leaving us enough specimens to deposit in the museums, the reputable museums of the world I think that's very, very important what this micro CT technology is able to do is to be able to compare accurately the morphological and anatomic features of tamilokus with the other genera so you can imagine those would also be subjected to the same micro CT analysis and really imaging so I could go on and on but I think oh yeah, that's well as we can see the technology to do these species identifications have advanced because before it was just histology and electron microscopy now we're using micro CT your study is really quite unique especially for a group of mollus that are hardly ever known by a lot of people and it's indeed a great contribution to the discourse and knowledge about our mollus here in the Philippines and I'm quite sure that you experience some challenges while doing this but I think you shared the challenges you met in doing this study research perhaps you can add more well I think that first challenge is always access to the biodiversity and it takes us years to get our permits and to get our legal type but still we succeed because we're persistent and tenacious about it and we appreciate the DABFAR for allowing us to study organisms in the Verde Island passage where Mabini Batangas is maybe the second challenge is well it's still in line with my perpetual advocacy which is maybe the limited number of experts in our country so here we say that we have foreign experts and we are lucky to have them with us and they're very protective of our biodiversity as well but more than that I think they are committed to training us and the next generation of biodiversity researchers in the world and so I would say that the challenges are being met by our program and our graduate students and researchers they complete their master's degrees it's not without difficulty but then and afterwards they proceed to their PhDs but immediately they already know the wealth of biodiversity in this country so are you saying that they will not come home for good? I doubt it I think they there's an advantage of eventually being here where the action is where you are closest to the biodiversity indeed there are challenges because you're thinking now Benji that we might have a micro CT in your lab or my lab eventually to try to identify new genus and species again do we have the funds for equipment to purchase those do we have again the technical expertise to run them well maintain or repair them so it's still the fundamental problems that we face in R&D in the university but what's nice is you have hospitals that know the principles of CT scan and MRI and this is just like made micro smaller it applies also to animal studies or animal models like mice and we wish that we already had an MRI suited for a mouse right but this one is micro this is for the tummy locks I think that it's exciting while it is challenging so as you yourself shared earlier the ship rooms have both ecological and economic important story lives into our culture so what impact would you like to study to have okay so in this paper reported only one kind of shipworm and it's one that's submerged to meters or less log is submerged what is submerged okay they have slightly different habitats depending on the genus and we have a proposal that will submit and it's on bakawan mangroves because other shipworms they're really in mangroves mangrove wood kakawati driftwood okay then there's of course the kufus polythalamia that's an entirely different habitat it's in sulfidic muddy lake okay so it's uses would also be different but going back to your question I think studying the basic science of the tummy locks whether in bakawan or in submerged logs would be important for chemical oceanographers and environmental scientists as we said earlier major player in carbon recycling from terrestrial sources would terrestrial back to the marine environment where we came from anyway all of us but aside from that as I said we're very eager to know about the microbial symbionts of this tummy locus and hoping that we can also discover new genera genus of the bacteria as we did for the kufus and as we are doing for many more so we're actually discovering so many new genera and species of micro and macro organisms and not only that we are discovering new compounds that contribute to philippine biodiversity we're naming them after philippinos and philippino localities for example you know we have nicknamed our compounds they're not yet published but we have a boholamide we have a butoanamide we have a minda peroles for compounds that were isolated from a micro organism found in minda now tato olivera named konantukin konikutikot so you know philippino names apolinario we are paying tribute to apolinario mabini our national hero who is the learned we find it important to name it after our intellectual national hero the sublime paralytic apolinario mabini i think that's very important because he is one of our national heroes who valued education knowledge and learning and i think that unless we do these kinds of basic research to extend and expand our understanding of nature and evolution which is so rich in our country i don't think we can fascinate our school children our undergraduates and postgraduates try to contribute to our country's growth and development in these innovative ways i think there are many reasons why we would like to pursue this research it's a bit on the basic side and you'll say what's the economic importance of this by saying that if we could think of the health of the bakawan or the mangrove ecosystem and we already have identified a site then that could be the site for community-based agro-industrial activities and sources of livelihood and the shipworms would be a major player meaning the health of the mangrove in providing perhaps food as a delicacy and providing us the bacteria that are the source of new drugs potential drugs probably that's the main point that you'd like people to understand and if you have anything to add for the person on the street if they ask about the new discovery what would you like them to really understand about it not only the person in the street but the persons who are always out there in the water the divers who do it for fun or for pleasure they should help us with our biological studies so if we publicize this kind of research who knows there might be we'll be able to spot new organisms not just shipworms that had never been seen before and that's quite lightly and the way that's being done now is there are sites where you post an image of the organism and then there's a way of checking out whether that particular genus or species has already been identified that's good learning for our kids or school children and also for our adult population and this is bringing science one step closer to what you call citizen science that kind of science citizen science and it's nice because it's now featured by by our ICT experts here in UP Film Institute and Mascom and I think that for us to communicate this well to our general public even to our government officials and science administrators we need our artists culture experts and social scientists to communicate the medium the short medium and long-term benefits on this kind of research to Filipinos So you'd like to share any other thoughts or comments or maybe any last words about your study? Oh, we'd like to encourage scientists in UP the Liman College of Science and other CEOs of UP to be doing biodiversity research I believe that the way to sustain this kind of research is to make the people who are surrounded by the biodiversity involved and the best way to do that and to sustain this this effort is through the education system So the public school system whether it is the grade school sorry the K to 12 and then all the way to the SUCs they should be linking up with us we should be reaching out to them and in this case I already have the person in MSI whom I think would serve as a bridge say to Batanga State University to continue this kind of research Thank you very much Dr. Concepcion for sharing with us this very important interesting discovery This makes us proud that this genus species was found in the area of Mabini Batangas in the Philippines Thank you to Ben for inviting me to this program to everyone let us always look forward to new discoveries and new knowledge especially by those involving Filipino scientists and academics Thank you and to our viewers we would hope that you were able to learn so much about this new genus and species of shipworm tamilokus mabinya We hope to see you again for another interesting and exciting new discovery I am Dr. Ben Valio Jr. bidding you goodbye