Let the right ones in: Testing microeconomic models of screening in an ant-bacteria microbiome

让合适的人进来：测试抗菌微生物组筛选的微观经济模型

• 批准号: NE/J01074X/1
• 负责人: Matthew Hutchings
• 金额: $ 54.45万
• 依托单位: University of East Anglia
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2012 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FJ01074X%2F1
• 关键词: Let; right; ones; Testing; microeconomic

A group of ants in tropical America, known as the 'attines' or 'leafcutters,' evolved agriculture at least 50 million years ago. These ants collect plants and take them back to their nests, where they chew up the plants to feed a special fungus that is only able to live with leafcutter ants. Not surprisingly, in some parts of the New World, leafcutter ants are a pest, able to strip leaves off whole orange trees in one night, to feed enormous fungal gardens that fill underground ant nests as big as a two-story house (in London, not Las Vegas). In return for housing and food, the fungus produces fat- and sugar-rich structures, called gongylidia, that the ants harvest as food. Scientists call this co-dependence a mutualism because the ants and the fungus mutually benefit each other. The ants also protect their valuable fungal garden by weeding out moulds, which, if not controlled, would eventually consume the garden. The ants also apply antibiotics to kill the foreign moulds. They get the antibiotics from another mutualist, which also lives with the ants. These other mutualists are a special set of bacteria, called the actinomycetes, which are famous (amongst biologists) for making many kinds of antibiotics, some of which we use as medicine, like erythromycin. The actinomycetes are therefore also mutualists with the ant and the garden, because the bacteria fight disease, and in return, live on the ant bodies, where specialised glands appear to feed the bacteria.We have shown that many actinomycete species live on the ants and provide a mixture of antibiotics, probably to slow down the evolution of antibiotic resistance in the diseases that invade the fungus gardens. Biologists call the bacterial communities that live on a host organism its microbiome. In the attine microbiome, one group of actinomycetes, known as Pseudonocardia, are thought to have been handed down over generations, adapting to its ant hosts. Other actinomycetes, mostly in the group called Streptomyces, appear to be acquired anew from the soil in each generation. This is surprising, because the soil is full of bacteria, most of which are not Streptomyces, but somehow the ant is able to selectively take up useful, antibiotic-producing bacteria, and not harmful or useless bacteria. At a conceptual level, this problem is the same as the one faced by auto rescue companies wanting to sell coverage only to customers who own reliable cars. The characteristics of the soil bacteria and of potential customers are hidden, but everyone, good or bad, reliable or unreliable, wants to live on the ant or be rescued on the road.Economics has developed a solution to this problem of hidden characteristics, which is known as screening. Applied to ants, our hypothesis is that the ants provide the right mix of resources to promote fighting amongst bacteria. The winners are the ones that can release antibiotics, since the real purpose of antibiotics is to allow the producers to kill other bacteria. It happens that antibiotic-producing bacteria also have genes that make them resistant to their own antibiotics (and, because bacteria exchange genes, to many others), otherwise, they would commit suicide when they make antibiotics. The fighting produces a microbiome dominated by antibiotic-producing and -resistant bacteria, which, of course, is the desired outcome. One of our goals is to understand the mix of resources that promote the 'right kind of fighting' amongst bacteria. It appears now that every animal and every plant has a microbiome that provides important benefits, such as synthesising essential nutrients and defending against disease. An emerging idea in human medicine is that managing our own microbiome could cure some of our more recalcitrant diseases. The attine microbiome is just one of many, but its advantage is that we can do experiments with it, which gives us hope that we can work out general principles governing how to create and manage microbiomes.

至少在5000万年前，一群热带美国的蚂蚁，被称为“ Athines”或“叶子”。这些蚂蚁收集植物并将其带回巢，在那里它们咀嚼植物，以喂养一种只能与叶牛肉蚂蚁生活在一起的特殊真菌。毫不奇怪，在新世界的某些地方，叶牛肉蚂蚁是害虫，能够在一个晚上剥去叶子，以喂养巨大的真菌花园，这些花园充满了像两层楼的房屋一样大的地下蚂蚁巢（伦敦，而不是拉斯维加斯）。作为住房和食物的回报，真菌产生蚂蚁收获作为食物的脂肪和糖富含脂肪和糖的结构。科学家称这种共同依赖性为互助，因为蚂蚁和真菌相互受益。蚂蚁还通过除草霉菌来保护其宝贵的真菌花园，如果不受控制，最终将消耗花园。蚂蚁还使用抗生素杀死外国模具。他们从另一种共同主义者那里获得抗生素，该抗生素也与蚂蚁生活在一起。这些其他共同的人是一组特殊的细菌，称为放线菌，在生物学家中著名（在生物学家中）生产多种抗生素，其中一些我们用作药物，例如红霉素。因此，放线菌也是与蚂蚁和花园的共同主义者，因为细菌与疾病作斗争，作为回报，生活在蚂蚁身体上，在那里专门的腺体似乎可以喂养细菌。我们表明，许多放线菌的物种都生活在蚂蚁上，并提供了抗生素的混合物，可能会减慢抗生素的抗原抗性，从而减缓了Invade in Invade in Invade in Invade in Invade in Invade in Invade in Invade in Invade in Invade in Invade in Invade in Invade in Invade and vense nife and undeass in Invade and undease and undease conf。生物学家称生活在寄主有机体上的细菌群落为微生物组。在Attinaice微生物组中，认为一组被称为假心态的放线菌已被认为已被传授给世代，适应其蚂蚁宿主。其他重大的放线菌，主要是在该组中，似乎是从每一代人的土壤中重新获得的。这是令人惊讶的，因为土壤中充满了细菌，其中大多数不是链霉菌，但是蚂蚁以某种方式能够选择性地服用有用的，抗生素产生的细菌，而不是有害或无用的细菌。从概念上讲，此问题与想要仅向拥有可靠汽车的客户出售承保范围的汽车救援公司面临的问题相同。土壤细菌和潜在客户的特征是隐藏的，但是每个人，好是坏，可靠或不可靠，都希望生活在蚂蚁上或在道路上被救出。经济学已经为隐藏特征的这个问题提供了一种解决方案，称为筛查。应用于蚂蚁，我们的假设是蚂蚁提供了正确的资源组合，以促进细菌之间的战斗。获奖者是可以释放抗生素的人，因为抗生素的真正目的是允许生产者杀死其他细菌。碰巧的是，产生抗生素的细菌也具有使其对自己的抗生素有抵抗力的基因（并且因为细菌将基因交换为许多其他抗生素），否则，它们在生产抗生素时会自杀。战斗产生的微生物组以抗生素产生和耐药性细菌为主，当然，这是所需的结果。我们的目标之一是了解促进细菌中“正确的战斗”资源的组合。现在看来，每种动物和每种植物都有一个微生物组，可提供重要的好处，例如合成必需的营养素和防御疾病。人类医学中的一个新想法是，管理我们自己的微生物组可以治愈我们一些更顽固的疾病。 Attinine微生物组只是众多，但其优势是我们可以对其进行实验，这使我们希望我们能够制定有关如何创建和管理微生物组的一般原则。

项目成果

Streptomyces as symbionts: an emerging and widespread theme?

• DOI: 10.1111/j.1574-6976.2011.00313.x
• 发表时间: 2012-07-01
• 期刊: FEMS MICROBIOLOGY REVIEWS
• 影响因子: 11.3
• 作者: Seipke, Ryan F.;Kaltenpoth, Martin;Hutchings, Matthew I.
• 通讯作者: Hutchings, Matthew I.

Genome Analysis of Two Pseudonocardia Phylotypes Associated with Acromyrmex Leafcutter Ants Reveals Their Biosynthetic Potential.

• DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2016.02073
• 发表时间: 2016
• 期刊: Frontiers in microbiology
• 影响因子: 5.2
• 作者: Holmes NA;Innocent TM;Heine D;Bassam MA;Worsley SF;Trottmann F;Patrick EH;Yu DW;Murrell JC;Schiøtt M;Wilkinson B;Boomsma JJ;Hutchings MI
• 通讯作者: Hutchings MI

Chemical warfare between fungus-growing ants and their pathogens.

• DOI: 10.1016/j.cbpa.2020.08.001
• 发表时间: 2020-12
• 期刊: Current opinion in chemical biology
• 影响因子: 7.8
• 作者: Batey SFD;Greco C;Hutchings MI;Wilkinson B
• 通讯作者: Wilkinson B

How to assemble a beneficial microbiome in three easy steps.

如何通过三个简单的步骤组装有益的微生物组

• DOI: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2012.01853.x
• 发表时间: 2012-11
• 期刊: Ecology letters
• 影响因子: 8.8
• 作者: Scheuring I;Yu DW
• 通讯作者: Yu DW

Chemical warfare between leafcutter ant symbionts and a co-evolved pathogen.

• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-04520-1
• 发表时间: 2018-06-07
• 期刊: Nature communications
• 影响因子: 16.6
• 作者: Heine D;Holmes NA;Worsley SF;Santos ACA;Innocent TM;Scherlach K;Patrick EH;Yu DW;Murrell JC;Vieria PC;Boomsma JJ;Hertweck C;Hutchings MI;Wilkinson B
• 通讯作者: Wilkinson B