ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2018
Evolutionary stability of antibiotic protection in a defensive symbiosis.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 46 papers.
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Who cites it
46 citing papers in PubMed, 86 citations in OpenAlex.
- Experimental Sodalis infection eliminates ancient insect symbiont.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Defensive symbionts of the European beewolf face competition from brood cell microbiota during vertical transmission.FEMS microbiology ecology · 2026Article
- Origin and function of beneficial bacterial symbioses in insects.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2025Review
- Organ structure and bacterial microbiogeography in a reproductive organ of the Hawaiian bobtail squid reveal dimensions of a defensive symbiosis.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- The integral role of the Black Soldier fly,Frontiers in microbiomes · 2025Review
- Comparative genomics unravels a rich set of biosynthetic gene clusters with distinct evolutionary trajectories across fungal species (Termitomyces) farmed by termites.Communications biology · 2024Article
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- Repeated horizontal acquisition of lagriamide-producing symbionts in Lagriinae beetles.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- With a little help from my friends: the roles of microbial symbionts in insect populations and communities.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Repeated horizontal acquisition of lagriamide-producing symbionts in Lagriinae beetles.The ISME journal · 2024Article
- Actinomycetes associated with hymenopteran insects: a promising source of bioactive natural products.Frontiers in microbiology · 2024Review
- Article
- Host hydrocarbons protect symbiont transmission from a radical host defense.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Article
- Bacterial ectosymbionts in cuticular organs chemically protect a beetle during molting stages.The ISME journal · 2022Article
- Investigation of carbonyl amidation andSynthetic and systems biotechnology · 2022Article
- Beyond Soil-Dwelling Actinobacteria: Fantastic Antibiotics and Where to Find Them.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- Comparative Morphology of the Symbiont Cultivation Glands in the Antennae of Female Digger Wasps of the GenusFrontiers in physiology · 2022Article
- Diversity and antibacterial potential of the Actinobacteria associated withFrontiers in microbiology · 2022Article
- Diversification of ergot alkaloids and heritable fungal symbionts in morning glories.Communications biology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The increasing resistance of human pathogens severely limits the efficacy of antibiotics in medicine, yet many animals, including solitary beewolf wasps, successfully engage in defensive alliances with antibiotic-producing bacteria for millions of years. Here, we report on the in situ production of 49 derivatives belonging to three antibiotic compound classes (45 piericidin derivatives, 3 streptochlorin derivatives, and nigericin) by the symbionts of 25 beewolf host species and subspecies, spanning 68 million years of evolution. Despite a high degree of qualitative stability in the antibiotic mixture, we found consistent quantitative differences between species and across geographic localities, presumably reflecting adaptations to combat local pathogen communities. Antimicrobial bioassays with the three main components and in silico predictions based on the structure and specificity in polyketide synthase domains of the piericidin biosynthesis gene cluster yield insights into the mechanistic basis and ecoevolutionary implications of producing a complex mixture of antimicrobial compounds in a natural setting.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.