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Published online 29 March 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/458561a
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Fungus farmers show way to new drugs
Ant colonies could be key to advances in biofuels and antibiotics.
In a mutually beneficial symbiosis, leaf-cutting ants cultivate fungus gardens, providing both a safe home for the fungi and a food source for the ants. But this 50-million-year-old relationship also includes microbes that new research shows could help speed the quest to develop better antibiotics and biofuels.
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Doesn't it make a lot of sense that it would take a complicated mixture of enzymes or other reactants that are not commonly found together to digest cellulose? If these things were common then we would not see much cellulose around and plants would have to evolve another compund to provide the structural support that cellulose now provides.
Maybe the cellulose degradation initially requires some formic acid from the ants....
The fact that plants are not consumed at a much greater rate is not because cellulose were so difficult to break down by microorganisms (many have cellulase) but because cells include many other compounds that are more resistant (lignin, for instance) or toxic. The importance of the bacteria in this symbiosis appears to be that they proved very efficient weed control