The immune system of darkling beetle miller (Tenebrio molitor) eliminates the vast majority of microbes that infect in less than an hour, then slows the development of resistant microbes through the production of antimicrobial peptides for many days, thus avoiding the emergence of resistant microbes. Can we take inspiration for medical treatment that would enhance the development of multi-antibiotic resistance among pathogenic?

The immune system of milling darkling beetle, an insect beetle, neutralized in less than an hour most bacteria infecting its hemolymph, the equivalent of the blood of vertebrates, something made possible by a set of cells and enzymes ready for the employment. Bacteria resistant to the first front fenders are then taken over

by antimicrobial peptides, a kind of natural antibiotics, which inhibit multiplication. Better understand these players insect immunity would develop treatments avoiding the development of drug resistance. These are the results of a study conducted by the evolutionary ecology laboratory Biogeosciences (CNRS / University of Burgundy in Dijon) in collaboration with researchers English, forthcoming in the next issue of Science. Microbes have a great capacity to adapt to many strategies in place to destroy. Since nearly 400 million years, the immune systems of animals, including insects relatively simple, seems to have managed to avoid the development of microbial resistance. His secret: a small toolbox custom natural antibiotics, antimicrobial peptides. Researchers here have shown that the first line of cellular and enzymatic defenses of the immune system of the insect, called components, saving a small number of bacteria and then promotes the development of resistance among microbes. However, a second line of defenses involving antimicrobial peptides synthesized later to the elimination of most bacteria by the first front allows defenses to contain the growth of these persistent microbes, which can lead to their elimination. Thus, the main function of antimicrobial peptides produced by the immune system of insects is to prevent the resurgence of microbes resistant to defenses that make the host and would, therefore, reduce the emergence of resistant microbes.