Wolves are capable of using antibiotic combinations

German scientists have proved that the wolf bee, a kind of bumblebee, whose scientific name Philanthus specializes in eating honey bees, is able to use the combination of antibiotics produced by symbiotic bacteria to protect Protect your larva from disease.

This sheds some light on the role of antibiotics in nature and can be used to produce new drugs.

The information was published in the February 28 issue of Nature Chemical Biology.

Wolf bees are subterranean nests, so their larvae must live in high humidity conditions, so they often suffer from a large number of viruses and pathogenic bacteria.

A group of leading scientists, including Martin Kaltenpoth and Ales Svatos of Regensburg University and the Institute of Chemical Ecology, Max Planck (Germany), have demonstrated for the first time to protect larvae from organisms. pathogenic, the wolf bee has used a combination of nine antibiotics that are evenly distributed in the embryonic shell.

To produce these antibiotics, wolf bees use some forms of bacteria that live in symbiosis with them.

Symbiosis between bacteria and bee bees has been discovered by a group of scientists a few years ago. But now, thanks to a new method, the team of scientists has demonstrated that symbiotic bacteria have produced a mixture of nine antibiotics in the larvae, and this antibiotic mixture is a "shield". Very reliable protection against pathogenic bacteria and viruses.

A scientist in the group said the findings suggest that millions of years ago, wolf bees and symbiotic bacteria developed a strategy that medicine recently learned - that is, "prevention of synthetic diseases. "

The analysis of these antibiotics will allow researchers not only to understand the evolutionary premise of this symbiosis but also to produce many new medicines for medicine.