Managing the competition: How do burying beetles and microbes sustainably coexist in competition over shared resources?

管理竞争：埋藏甲虫和微生物如何在共享资源的竞争中可持续共存？

• 批准号: NE/V012053/1
• 负责人: Nicholas Royle
• 金额: $ 82.18万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF EXETER
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FV012053%2F1
• 关键词: Managing; competition; How; do; burying

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the most important public health issues that society currently faces. Inappropriate use of antibiotics has accelerated the rate at which bacteria have evolved resistance and the development of new antimicrobials is very expensive and time-consuming and has almost come to a halt. Consequently we need to develop better ways to sustainably utilize existing and future antimicrobials.However, there is a lack of consensus on the best way to manage resistance, especially for bacteria. Which resistance management strategy would be most effective? Is it most effective to reduce prescribing rates or should antimicrobials be given in combination, and if so, what combinations? It has been difficult to address these questions in a clinical setting and relevant experimental systems to validate resistance management strategies outside of clinical trials are currently rare. Here we proposal a novel approach to these problems: use organisms in which management of bacteria and other microbes is a fundamental part of their natural history to elucidate the most effective strategies to combat antimicrobial resistance. Burying beetles fit the bill perfectly. They process the carcasses of small vertebrates such as mice to rear their young and are unusual among invertebrates in having extended, complex parental care. In addition to feeding their offspring like birds do (burying beetle larvae beg to be fed and parents respond by regurgitating food - dead mouse) they also produce antimicrobial secretions to combat competition from microbes, especially bacteria. It is this latter form of parental care that we are most interested in here. Since there is evidence that burying beetles have been providing care and managing competition from microbes for approximately 100 million years there are likely to be substantial rewards from exploring what resistance management strategies they use.The particular novelty of our approach is to use experimental evolution to see how both beetles and bacteria respond to increased selection pressure from each other. We can therefore observe evolution in action and test the relative efficiency of different resistance management strategies directly. In particular we will challenge populations of burying beetles over successive generations with resistant bacteria that we will produce in the lab and see how they respond and what resistance management strategies they use. We predict that burying beetles reduce the rate at which bacterial communities evolve resistance by managing how different bacteria compete with one another through variation in the composition of the cocktail of antimicrobials that they produce. Our results are expected to provide a significant step forward in our understanding of how to manage AMR most effectively.

抗菌素耐药性（AMR）是社会当前面临的最重要的公共卫生问题之一。抗生素的不当使用加速了细菌产生耐药性的速度，而新抗菌药物的开发非常昂贵且耗时，几乎已经停止。因此，我们需要开发更好的方法来可持续地利用现有和未来的抗菌药物。然而，对于管理耐药性（尤其是细菌耐药性）的最佳方法缺乏共识。哪种阻力管理策略最有效？降低处方率是否最有效，或者是否应该联合使用抗菌药物？如果是，采用什么组合？在临床环境中很难解决这些问题，并且目前在临床试验之外验证耐药性管理策略的相关实验系统很少。在这里，我们提出了解决这些问题的新方法：利用对细菌和其他微生物的管理是其自然史的基本组成部分的生物体来阐明对抗抗菌素耐药性的最有效策略。埋葬甲虫完全符合要求。它们处理小鼠等小型脊椎动物的尸体来抚养幼崽，并且在无脊椎动物中具有长期、复杂的亲代照顾，这在无脊椎动物中是不寻常的。除了像鸟类一样喂养后代（埋葬甲虫幼虫乞求喂养，父母通过反刍食物——死老鼠来回应）之外，它们还产生抗菌分泌物来对抗微生物，尤其是细菌的竞争。我们在这里最感兴趣的是后一种形式的父母照顾。由于有证据表明，大约一亿年来，埋藏甲虫一直在提供照顾并管理来自微生物的竞争，因此探索它们使用的抗性管理策略可能会带来丰厚的回报。我们方法的特别新颖之处在于使用实验进化来观察甲虫和细菌如何应对彼此增加的选择压力。因此，我们可以观察行动的演变并直接测试不同阻力管理策略的相对效率。特别是，我们将用我们在实验室中产生的耐药细菌来挑战连续几代的埋藏甲虫种群，看看它们如何反应以及它们使用什么耐药性管理策略。我们预测，埋藏甲虫会通过改变不同细菌产生的抗菌剂混合物的成分来管理不同细菌之间的竞争，从而降低细菌群落产生耐药性的速度。我们的研究结果预计将在我们了解如何最有效地管理抗菌素耐药性方面向前迈出重要一步。