Unexpectedly found a new antibiotic when studying ants in Africa

A good news comes from the worldwide "front" of antiviral and antibiotic resistance: Researchers at the University of East Anglia and the John Innes Center, UK, recently discovered a new antibiotics.

Is isolated from the bacterial strain found in ant symbiotic medium and one species in Africa, the new antibiotic is named formicamycins , with the formica prefix in Latin meaning ant.

Validation of formicamycins is effective in combating MRSA virus (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and VRE (Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococci).

While VRE group bacteria are less dangerous and resistant to common antibiotics, MRSA are strong antibiotic resistant viruses. It can cause life-threatening infections, and is actually killing more than 11,000 people every year, in the United States alone.

Scientists found a new antibiotic when studying ants in Africa.

Over the past 30 years, people have hardly developed any new antibiotics. Nearly all of our antibiotics are now 40-80 years old. They are prepared and isolated from actinomyces living in the soil.

Abuse of antibiotics around the world has caused the heyday of antibiotics to pass quickly. The bacteria have now learned how to become resistant to human treatments.

Some strains of multidrug-resistant bacteria become dangerous because they are resistant to many antibiotics at the same time. In particular, some types of bacteria are recorded that can resist all existing human antibiotics.

This leads to an ongoing medical crisis across the globe. Last September, the United Nations for the first time in a General Assembly meeting raised the level of warning about antibiotic resistance, parity with the Ebola epidemic and HIV / AIDS.

Over the past 30 years, people have not developed a new strain of antibiotics.

There are many ways to solve the problem. But one of the obvious solutions is that we have to find and develop new antibiotics, antibiotics that bacteria cannot learn to fight.

"We have discovered the symbiotic forms of symbiotic self-defense, between the bacteria that produce antibiotics and the insects that live with fungi, to better understand how this organization was formed and discovered. as a new source of medicine to fight infection ". Professor Matt Hutchings from the University of East Anglia said.

" Kenyan ants eat symbiotic plants with thorny acacia trees. They live and reproduce in a domatia - an empty structure that plants have developed over evolution to build houses for arthropods. Ants "They will grow mushrooms in them to eat them, they will protect the acacia from other animals that eat grass, including elephants. Animals that do not eat ants in it".

The team isolated several strains of bacteria from acacia bark that made houses for ants, selected a number to decode their genetic sequences. The results caused them to place great attention on a strain of bacteria, and compounds that the bacteria secrete could fight off the virus that causes disease.

Professor Hutchings said: " We tested formicamycins to fight MRSA bacteria as well as VRE, and found it strongly inhibited these bacteria."

Bacteria in ants symbiotic environment with acacia trees help scientists find new antibiotics.

To test whether the viruses are resistant to formicamycins, the team repeated the experiment. But this time, they only use antibiotics with low doses, besides, allowing viruses a chance to live and reproduce through 20 generations to learn how to resist.

As a result, the MRSA and VRE bacteria still cannot resist new formicamycins . Professor Wilkinson, from John Innes Research Center, added that their findings underscored the world scientific community on a seemingly outdated research direction:

Continuing natural search and discovery, but combining modern gene technology can allow us to discover new antibiotics. Those must be priceless weapons, while the whole world is facing the current resistance to antibiotic resistance.

The research report was published in the journal Chemical Science.