Honeypot ants (Camponotus inflatus) hanging from the ceiling of a nest, engorged with nectar
Minden Pictures/Alamy
Honey produced by a sort of ant in Australia has antimicrobial properties that might sooner or later result in new remedies towards some bacterial and fungal infections.
Australian honeypot ants (Camponotus inflatus) are present in arid areas of central and western components of the nation. Their colonies are made up of atypical employee ants and a specialised body of workers known as repletes. These collect nectar that they stuff into their prolonged abdomens, giving them a glassy, amber hue.
“They are principally the holding vessels of the nectar that’s introduced in,” says Andrew Dong on the University of Sydney, Australia. By regurgitating the nectar, the replete ants produce a honey that feeds the remainder of colony.
For 1000’s of years, Indigenous Australians have eaten this honey and used it to deal with sore throats, wounds and pores and skin ulcers, says Danny Ulrich, an Indigenous Australian who assisted the researchers.
In a laboratory experiment, Dong and his colleagues uncovered a variety of bacterial and fungal pathogens to totally different doses of the honey. They discovered {that a} water resolution made up of 8 per cent honey killed the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus – a number one explanation for pores and skin and gentle tissue infections that may additionally result in pneumonia or enter the blood, bones or joints.
At a 16 per cent focus, the honey killed some fungi species, equivalent to Aspergillus fumigatus and Cryptococcus deuterogattii, which may each trigger critical medical problems.
When the researchers in contrast the ant honey to forms of bee honey with identified antimicrobial properties, equivalent to Manuka, the ant honey killed a narrower vary of micro organism and fungi. For instance, it was ineffective towards fungi equivalent to Candida albicans, which may trigger thrush, and micro organism like Escherichia coli, a explanation for meals poisoning. Manuka and different forms of bee honey killed each of those pathogens.
Most honey made by bees accommodates hydrogen peroxide, which is considered the supply of its antimicrobial properties. Ant honey accommodates a lot much less of this molecule, suggesting that there’s something chemically distinctive about it, says workforce member Kenya Fernandes on the University of Sydney. “We hypothesise that it’s most certainly to be an antimicrobial peptide that’s being produced by the ants.”
Ant honey is uncommon and culturally vital to Indigenous Australians, says Fernandes. It is due to this fact unlikely to ever be used immediately in medicines, she says. The workforce hopes to establish the honey’s energetic compounds so these can sooner or later be replicated when growing new remedies, says Fernandes.
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