International audience Four "morphotypes" of Mytilidae were collected from wood falls in the west Pacific (Vanuatu islands) and in the Bohol sea (Philippines) between 300 and 1800 metre depth. Results from our study demonstrated the existence of extracellular bacteria located between microvilli at the apical surface of the cells all along the lateral zone of the gill filaments in the four mytilid morphotypes analyzed. Based on TEM observations, these Gram-negative bacteria were not methanotrophic due to the lack of concentric stacking of intracellular membranes in their cytoplasm. Based on FISH experiments, these bacteria belong to g-Proteobacteria. These preliminary observations described gill symbiosis-like interactions in metazoan species associated with sunken wood, strengthening the hypothesis that decomposing wood may serve as steps for the introduction of symbiotic Mytilidae to vents and seeps. Phylogenetic analysis of these extracellular bacteria are in progress in our lab in order to compare their 16SrDNA sequences to that of other marine invertebrate symbionts described to date.