According to latest research by a team from the University of Oxford, the University of Stirling and the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole, a gaggle of small, freshwater animals can protect themselves from infection by utilizing antibiotic recipes “stolen” from bacteria. saves the
The tiny organisms are called bdelloid rotifers, which suggests 'reptile wheeled animals'. They have the identical head, mouth, intestines, muscles and nerves as other animals, although they're smaller than the width of a hair.
When these rotifers are exposed to a fungal infection, the study found that they alter lots of of genes they acquired from bacteria and other microbes. Some of those genes confer resistance in rotifers, resembling antibiotics and other antimicrobial agents. The team reports its findings this week.
“When we translated the DNA code to see what the stolen genes were doing, we were surprised,” said study lead writer Chris Wilson of the University of Oxford. “The core genes were instructions for chemicals we didn't think animals could make — they seemed to be the recipes for antibiotics.”
Previous research has shown that rotifers have been picking up DNA from their environment for thousands and thousands of years, but latest research has discovered using these genes to fight disease. No other animal is thought to “steal” genes from microbes on such a big scale.
“These complex genes – some of which are not found in any other animals – were derived from bacteria but evolved in rotifers,” said study co-author David Mark Welch, senior scientist and director of the Josephine Bay Paul Center. are”. In the Marine Biological Laboratory. “This raises the likelihood that rotifers are developing latest antimicrobials which may be less toxic to animals, including humans, than those we produce from bacteria and fungi.”
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Antibiotics are essential to modern health care, but most of them weren't invented by scientists. Instead, they're produced naturally by wild fungi and bacteria, and humans could make synthetic versions to make use of as medicine.
New research shows that rotifers are doing something similar.
“These strange little animals have copied the DNA that tells microbes how to make antibiotics,” explains Wilson. “We saw them using one of these genes against a disease caused by the fungus, and the animals that survived the infection were producing 10 times more of the chemical than those that died, showing It may help suppress the disease.”
Scientists imagine that rotifers could provide necessary clues within the seek for drugs to treat human infections attributable to bacteria or fungi.
Antibiotics have gotten less effective because disease-causing microbes have evolved to grow to be resistant and not reply to treatment. The World Health Organization recently sounded the alarm, warning in a June report that there's a “tremendous need” to develop latest antibiotics to counter the specter of resistance.
“The genes the rotifers are using look different from genes known in microbes,” said study writer Reuben Nowell of the University of Stirling. “They're just as long and complex, but parts of the DNA code have changed. We think evolution has changed the recipe to make new and different chemicals in rotifers. Medicines.”
Bacterial-derived genes from rotifers encode an unusual class of enzymes that synthesize amino acids into small molecules called nonribosomal peptides.
“The next step in this research should include the identification of several non-ribosomally synthesized peptides produced by bdelloid rotifers, and the establishment of conditions under which the synthesis of these compounds can be stimulated,” study co-author Irina said Arkhipova, senior scientist. Marine Biological Laboratory.
One problem in developing latest drugs is that many antibiotic chemicals made by bacteria and fungi are toxic or have unwanted side effects in animals. Only a number of might be changed into treatments that clear harmful microbes from the human body.
If rotifers are already making similar chemicals of their cells, they may lead to drugs which are safer to make use of in other animals, including humans.
Why do rotifers acquire so many foreign genes?
A giant query is why rotifers are the one animals that borrow these useful genes from microbes at such a high rate.
“We think this may be linked to another strange fact about these rotifers,” said study co-author Tim Barclaw of the University of Oxford. “Unlike other animals, we never see male rotifers. Rotifer mothers lay eggs that hatch into their own genetic copies without the need for sex or fertilization.”
One theory suggests that animals that duplicate themselves in this manner may grow to be so similar that they grow to be unhealthy. “If one catches the disease, so will the rest,” Barraclough explained. Because bdelloid rotifers are asexual, which allows parental genes to recombine in useful ways, the rotifer mother's genome is passed on to her offspring without introducing latest mutations.
“If rotifers can't find a way to replace their genes, they could become extinct. This could help explain why these rotifers have borrowed so many genes from other places, especially But anything that helps them fight infection,” Barraclough said.
Nowell believes there may be more to learn from rotifers and their stolen DNA “Rotifers were using lots of of genes not seen in other animals. Antibiotic recipes are interesting, and another The plant findings are a part of a growing story about how and why genes are transferred between several types of life.