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“They have a very sophisticated system to deal with dangerous and sometimes deadly infections with remarkable effectiveness,” he says. erik franco, a scientist at the Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology at the University of Würzburg, cites a cure rate of almost 90 percent among ants. “We can learn a lot from these little creatures.”
Frank and his colleagues studied how ants produce antimicrobial substances and apply them to the wounds of their fellow ants, and recently reported their recommendations in the journal Nature Communications.
His research focused on ants infected with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a virulent and often drug-resistant bacteria common in ant lesions. It is the same microbe that contaminated human eye drops in the United States last year, causing cases of blindness and death.
Insights into ant behavior could have implications for humans, scientists say, especially when it comes to drug-resistant bacteria, a growing threat that has made it difficult to treat certain infections.
There is “great potential for analysis by pharmaceutical companies or other scientists in these fields to investigate this further,” Frank says. “We have a scenario incredibly similar to ours: an animal with an infected wound and another animal that treats it. Faced with the same problem, the solutions that these ants came up with should be transferable to some extent to our own system.”
History is rich in examples of how science turns to nature as a source of human therapeutics. “Some of our most useful and long-lasting antibiotics or antiparasitic agents were first discovered from natural sources,” says Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of the Center for Medicine. Texas Children’s Hospital. Vaccine Development, which was not involved in the study.
Among these are antibiotics. streptomycin and the antiparasitic ivermectin, both isolated from the ground; bacteriophages, viruses found in sewage, soil, sewage and animal intestines that are harmless to humans but kill bacteria; and magainin antimicrobial peptidesobtained from the skin of the African clawed frog.
“The magainin case was based in part on the observation of rapid healing in frog skin, not unlike the discovery in ants,” says Hotez. “It turns out that looking at antimicrobial substances from natural products is a promising route for the discovery of new anti-infectives.”
Ants produce a substance composed of 100 chemical compounds and 41 proteins when treating infected wounds, which “allows them to have a multifaceted approach, like a broad-spectrum antibiotic,” Frank says. “I think some of these compounds could certainly have some uses in our own medical system as well.”
A protein never before seen in secretions “was by far the most abundant,” he says, adding, “I bet there’s something special about this protein in treating infected wounds.”
The ants, named after the Matabele tribe of southern Africa, hunt with military precision. First, a scout finds the termites, then returns to the nest and recruits up to 800 soldier ants.
They follow the scout in column formation and then gather to attack. Only five to ten ants are injured, which “may not seem like much,” says Frank, but the number can increase quickly “as these ants can go out hunting up to five times a day.” This could mean 1,000 in a month, which is not insignificant because the colonies do not consist of more than 2,000, he says.
“Ants have a special chemical profile in their cuticle that they use to recognize each other,” explains Frank, comparing it to a uniform, with “medals” that identify the queen, foragers, nurses and those with other jobs, and points out the condition. of an injury. According to Frank, this allows them to recognize when an ant is injured and whether its immune system is fighting an infection.
Ants extract antibiotic materials from the metapleural gland, located on the side of their thorax. “Imagine the metapleural gland as a kind of pocket, about the same height as a pants pocket,” that contains the sticky antimicrobial secretions, Frank says. “To apply them to a wound, the ant puts its front legs into this pocket, collects the secretion in its ‘hands’ and then licks them to accumulate it in its mouth. “Once they have enough secretions in their mouth, they will start licking the wound.”
Robert T. Schooley, an infectious disease specialist and phage expert at the University of California, San Diego, says the study “speaks very clearly to the power of evolution at both the societal and individual levels. Societies succeed when they protect the most vulnerable.” Schooley was not involved in the investigation.
“Further work could provide information leading to antimicrobials useful in human and veterinary medicine,” Schooley says, although “the compounds are applied topically and it is unclear what toxicities might arise if administered systemically.”
The researchers want to collect more samples for further analysis, although this may prove difficult because the site of the initial field work, in northern Ivory Coast, is now under control. terrorist threatsays Frank. “I’m trying to find a solution: some locals help me collect the ants and send them to Germany,” he says.
Ants performing ‘triage’
The social behavior of ants first caught his attention after he accidentally ran over a hunting party of ants.
“I immediately got out of the car to check on the ants,” he recalls. “It was a huge disaster, the ants were running frantically. But they also searched for the wounded, picking up and carrying away those still worth saving. To my surprise, they left behind the ants that were too injured. “They were doing a kind of triage.”
His team is also studying soldier ants in Costa Rica and some European ant species (finding similar approaches to wound care) and hopes to include other social insects, such as bees. He is also watching how Chimpanzees use insects to treat their wounds.. “Overall, I think the topic of wound care in the animal kingdom is frustratingly underexplored and there is still much left to discover,” she says.