Living in slow Colony gives ants an advantage that has appropriate them to dominate whatever environment they happen to find themselves in . But as with humans living in crowded cities , being pack in so close to your neighbour mean that the terror of disease eruption is pretty in high spirits .
Millions of years before humans stumbled across them , ants were using antibiotics to command potentially devastating bacterial infections from sweep through nest . It was thought that because of the colonial nature of the worm , most ant species would be harness and using their own types of antibiotics , buta new study has wonder that .
research worker conducted a relative analytic thinking of 20 unlike ant specie . They took swab from the surfaces of all the different ants and then mixed them with a slurry of bacteria to test which would grow , comparing it all to a control mathematical group . If the research worker found that certain bacterium grew less when meld with the swabs taken from the ants than they did in the dominance , it meant that the pismire were cake in an antibacterial , which targets that picky micro-organism .
It wrick out that while 12 of the species tested showed antimicrobic place , a surprisingly mellow 8 did not . “ get a metal money that carry a herculean antimicrobial factor is good news for those interested in finding new antibiotic agents that can help human beings , ” explained Adrian Smith , co - generator of the composition published inRoyal Society Open Science . “ But the fact that so many ant species appear to have fiddling or no chemical defense against microbic pathogens is also crucial . ”
As well as finding some ants that seemingly do n’t produce antibiotic , at least not cover their body , they also discovered that one ant species made the most powerful antibiotics so far known , and it was a species that until now had not been proven to create any at all . The emmet in enquiry is the stealer ant , and the antibiotics on its control surface kill all the bacteria in the experimentation .
This info is crucial , as we turn to antsto see if they can instruct us a affair or two about medicine . You probably do n’t involve to be told by now that doctor and medical pro are genuinely concerned that we are going to run out of antibiotic drug in the not too removed time to come .
The number of fresh antibiotics discovered has almost ground to a halt while bacteria are continuing to evolve resistance to the unity we already have . This is put serious pressure on the hunt for novel ways to treat microorganisms , and researchers are increasingly ferment to nature in the hunting .
