Friday, March 19, 2010

Wasps paint walls with antibiotics!



In the past, man grew fungus and found out that it produced a substance that killed other disease - producing germs. It is the science about the production of Penicillin from the fungus, Penicillium notatum. But in the remote past millions of years ago wasps had found this fact and used this technique in protecting their developing offspring, the larvae! Yes, the Beewolf wasps (Philanthus crabroniformis) produce a cocktail of antibacterial substances from Streptomyces since ages.

They apply this substance on the walls of their nest cells where the larvae grow. Moreover, it has been also found that the cocktail substance contains a mixture of many different antibiotics, as we now use multi-drugs in killing the germs present in human body, that cause diseases like Tuberculosis and Leprosy!


It is a wonder news about these wasps' parental care towards their young ones. Probably, we have all our evolutionary ancestors' traits in us and are only rediscovering these that already exist - not by chance, but by an in-built intuition!

5 comments:

My Inner said...

enjoyed your blog.

very informative

Cosmos said...

Thanks for your response, Narmatha!

L. Venkata Subramaniam said...

Interesting.....i never knew this about wasps. Truly you are right we are all hardwired by nature.

Cosmos said...

Though we differentiate as man, animals, birds etc., all are within one, the Nature!

Teaching Biology said...

Wasps and bees are definitely amazing creatures. It has been a frightening past few years with farmers worrying about decreasing populations of bees and wasps due to climate change. Either way, great facts about wasps. I truly enjoyed the post.

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