ANTS AS DRUG MANUFACTURERS FOR HUMANS?
Ants naturally produce
powerful germicides against bacteria and fungi, revealed a study that targeted
the industrious insects as possible drug factories for humans.
The discovery of
ants’ pharmaceutical prowess comes as the armoury of effective antibiotics
developed by humans over the last 100 years dwindles in the face of growing
germ resistance.
Experiments with 20
ant species found antimicrobials on 12 of them, a team reported in the Royal
Society Open Science journal.
“This means ants are
probably a good place to look if you want to discover new antimicrobial
compounds,” study co-author Clint Penick of the Arizona State University in the
US told AFP.
Ants produce the
compounds in special glands often referred to as their “chemical factories”.
“Ants coat their
bodies with secretions from these glands, and some ants distribute these
antimicrobials around their nests similar to how we would use antiseptic
cleaners in our homes,” said Penick.
The team tested the
ant-manufactured chemicals on a usually harmless bacterium commonly found on
human skin, Staphylococcus epidermidis.
Compounds produced
by different species varied in their germ-killing effectiveness, the
researchers found. The chemicals have yet to be tested on bacteria capable of
causing human disease.
“It is important to
note that there have been over 15,000 ant species described, and each species
is likely to produce many different compounds that could have antimicrobial
action,” said Penick.
“We have taken the
first steps to identify which ant lineages have the highest potential to
produce antibiotics that work against human diseases, but there is much work
left to identify the chemicals that work as antibiotics and to figure out how
to synthesise them.”
Insects which live
in large, tightly-knit social groups – ideal breeding grounds for disease –
have long been thought to be a promising source of new antibiotics, Penick
said.
But until now, very
few have actually been tested.
Ants use their
chemical defences against a number of microbial invaders. These include several
bacteria, and a fungus that turns the ants into “zombies” by releasing
chemicals that hijack the insect’s central nervous system, effectively taking
its body for a ride before killing it.
A key question is
why ant-attacking pathogens have not developed resistance to antimicrobials
that the insects have presumably been using for millions of years, whereas many
human-developed drugs lose their potency within just decades.
Another key finding
of the study concerned the eight ant species which did not produce an
antimicrobial, at least none that was effective against the bacterium being
tested.
If a species does
not produce antimicrobials, it means they must have found another way to
protect themselves against disease, the team said.
“We are excited to
learn how some of these ant species might be doing that,” added Penick.
The UN describes
growing drug resistance – caused partly by overexposure to antibiotics – as a
“global health emergency”, risking a future in which people die of ailments
easily curable today.
SOURCE: AFP
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