Hochschulschrift:
Dissertation, Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät der Universität Greifswald, 2022
Anmerkungen:
Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 34-42. - Literaturangaben
Zusammenfassung in deutscher Sprache
Beschreibung:
Antibiotikaresistenz, Antimicrobial, Antimicrobial Resistance, Chemical Ecology, Metabolomics, Social Spiders, Volatiles
The discovery of antibiotics around one century ago was a milestone for medicine. However, despite the warning of Alexander Fleming in 1945, antibiotics were used poorly, resulting in many antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Patients infected with resistant pathogens need to get treated with additional antibiotics or, as a last resort, trust completely on their immune system. This causes 700,000 deaths per year. Most clinically used antibiotics have been derived from soil microorganisms, while other niches stayed unexplored. Exploring new niches inhabiting antibiotic-producing microorganisms may result in novel antibiotics. Furthermore, expanding the search from frequently investigated soluble metabolites to volatiles may open up numerous compounds as potential future antibiotics. This thesis is about the search for antimicrobial volatiles produced (among others) by microorganisms from social spider ecosystems, a niche that was little explored until now. Volatiles are characterized by their high vapor pressure at ambient temperatures, allowing them to distribute fast in both the gas and water phase. They can spread quickly even in complex ecosystems using the air and potentially fulfill functions like communication and antimicrobial defense. Especially, volatiles with antimicrobial activities caught the attention of many scientists because of their potential role in pathogen defense, as we have reviewed (Article I). Volatiles are usually produced in the primary metabolism and ...