Abstract
Antibiotics produced by symbiotic microorganisms were previously shown to be of crucial importance for ecological communities, including ants. Previous works on ant–actinobacteria symbiosis are mainly focused on farming ants, which use antifungal microbial secondary metabolites to control pathogens in their fungal gardens. In this work, we studied microorganisms associated with carpenter ant Camponotus vagus. Pronounced antifungal activity of isolated actinobacteria strain A10 was found to be facilitated by biosynthesis of the antimycin A complex, consisting of small hydrophobic depsipeptides with high antimicrobial and cytotoxic activity. The actinomycete strain A10 was identified as Streptomyces albidoflavus. We studied the antagonistic activity of strain A10 against several entomopathogenic microorganisms. The antifungal activity of this strain potentially indicates a defensive symbiosis with the host ant, producing antimycins to protect carpenter ants against infections. The nature of this ant-microbe association however remains to be established.
Highlights
IntroductionFor the last four decades, only 33.3% of small molecules approved for clinical use by the FDA were purely synthetic compounds, whereas all other drug leads were of a natural origin in some way [1]
Natural products are an abundant source of novel bioactive compounds
We studied microorganisms associated with carpenter ant Camponotus vagus
Summary
For the last four decades, only 33.3% of small molecules approved for clinical use by the FDA were purely synthetic compounds, whereas all other drug leads were of a natural origin in some way [1]. Recent studies on microorganisms from unusual environmental niches led to the discovery of several valuable bioactive compounds [2,3,4,5]. Recent studies on chemical ecology indicate that biosynthesis of antimicrobial secondary metabolites is a complex of genetically programmed responses to environmental signals, caused first and foremost by other organisms in a microbial community [6,7,8,9]. Studies of antimicrobial secondary metabolites in various ecological communities can both be harnessed for drug discovery and shed light on the molecular basis of inter-species interactions
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