The sources of drug discoveries has been a synthetic chemical pools and the natural resources including microbes, proteins, plants and animals. The worms especially the intestinal helminths has been neglected and I am wondering if anyone has any experience in this area including isolation, characterisation and biological activies-protocols and findings would be appreciated?
Insect gut possess both microflora and microfauna, they inhabit many species of fungi, which secrete antibiotics, and consume saccharides at a very higher rate, they generate high high amount of CO2 and secrete enzymes for degradation of complex plant natural products. They do make one microecosystem or a microfermenter which can synthesize secondary metabolites. Insect larvae which pupate inside soil are infected with spores or cysts of worms, when insect emerge they come out from the gut in large numbers. Insects synthesize hormones and lipoproteins.
Hi Phurpa, there has been a lot of work done on marine worms over the years. The cephalostatins come to mind as notable metabolites.
We have worked a little with insect fungi but there has been a huge effort on entomogenous fungi over many years. Beauvericins from Beauveria bassiana and the destruxins from Metarhizium species (both entomopathgenic fungi) are notable examples.
Thank you all for your comments. Prof Russell, how have you been doing? I saw one of your paper on insect fungi. I have made a request and would appreciate if you could also give a link to related works of yours. Thank you.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Plant Sciences
- Ethnobotany
- Natural Product Pharmacology