New study shows tiny animals steal antibiotic recipes from bacteria

When these rotifers catch an infection, the study found, they switch on hundreds of genes that have been copied into their DNA from bacteria and other microbes. ‘The recipes the rotifers are using look different from known genes in microbes,’ said study co-author Dr Reuben Nowell, from the University of Stirling. ‘We found that rotifers are using hundreds of genes that aren’t seen in other animals. The antibiotic recipes are exciting, and some other genes even look like they have been taken from plants. The study ‘Bdelloid rotifers deploy horizontally acquired biosynthetic genes against a fungal pathogen’ has been published in Nature Communications.