New Antibiotic found on African Ants

By: Gracie Gurr      Feb. 15, 2018

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The year 2017 was a year of breakthroughs and new discoveries, but one stood out beyond the others, especially in the world of medicine. A new antibiotic which is only produced by bacteria that is found on a specific species of African ant. This antibiotic could potently battle against antibiotic-resistant ‘superbugs’ like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) or Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) and many other life-threatening bacteria strains.

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A group of researchers at the John Innes Centre and the University of East Anglia discovered a new member of the Streptomyces bacteria family in late February on an ant located in Africa. The fungus has since been secluded from the African fungus-growing plant-ant called Tetraponera penzigi. This bacterium is normally found on the top of the head of the ant. The new species of bacterium is appointed the name Streptomyces formicae. Formicamycins references the Latin root word ‘formica’ meaning ‘ant’.

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Clinical trials have shown positive results to these new antibiotics. Currently, the antibiotic has been shown effective against Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) and Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococci

(VRE. These bacteria are resistant to a plethora

of common antibiotics and can cause

life-threatening infections. Practically all of

the antibiotics currently used in clinical trials

come from a group of bacteria called actinomycetes.

Actinomycetes were secluded from the soil between

40-80 years ago which is also called the 'golden

age' of antibiotic discovery. But these antibiotics

have been used inappropriately which has since led

to widespread antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This has since caused disease-causing bacteria and fungi to become resistant to one or more antibiotics making these ‘superbugs’ harder to treat.

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Kenyan plant-ants live in thorny acacia trees in Kenya. They live and breed in domatias, which are hollowed out structures. The plant the ants in live in evolves with them into a house for the ants to live in and grow fungus in them for food. This benefits the plant by the ants protecting them from large herbivores like elephants from eating them. Elephants will not eat plants covered in ants. 

The team of researchers secluded a number of actinomycete bacterial strains from the acacia plant housing the plant-ants. The research team then used the fungus to be genome sequenced. During this process, a distinct strain caught the researchers’ attention. The fungus was producing antibiotic compounds which showed promising activity in earlier tests that were conducted against other disease-causing bacteria.

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The researchers tested formicamycins against clinical isolates of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) and Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) and found that they are very effective inhibitors of these organisms. They repeated these tests by growing the strains for 20 generations in low, sub-inhibitory meditations of formicamycins and found no sign that the test strains obtained extemporaneous higher-level resistance to the new antibiotic.

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Ideally, in the future these findings could help cure MRSA and other antimicrobial resistance (AMR) diseases. Human clinical trials will start soon in 2018 and hopefully this will help further an understanding of naturally produced antibiotics. Maybe even one day these trials could advance research on larger diseases and even treat them, like cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. Maybe these findings could even cure these diseases in the near future.