Project description:Leaf cutter ant microbial communities from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, from fungus growing ant-garden - Acromyrmex fungus garden Combined metagenome

| PRJNA336998 | ENA

Metagenomic and metaproteomic insights into bacterial communities in leaf-cutter ant fungus gardens

Project description:Instrument data for publication "Metagenomic and metaproteomic insights into bacterial communities in leaf-cutter ant fungus gardens", ISME J. 2012 Sep; 6(9): 1688-1701. PMID: 22378535. PMCID: PMC3498920

2018-05-25 | MSV000082408 | MassIVE

ant fungus garden metagenome

Project description:Leaf cutter ant microbial communities from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, from fungus growing ant-garden - Atta cephalotes fungus garden Combined metagenome

| PRJNA336999 | ENA

Imaging with Mass Spectrometry of Bacteria on the Exoskeleton of Fungus-Growing Ants

Project description:Mass spectrometry imaging is a powerful analytical technique for detecting and determining spatial distributions of molecules within a sample. Typically, mass spectrometry imaging is limited to the analysis of thin tissue sections taken from the middle of a sample. In this work, we present a mass spectrometry imaging method for the detection of compounds produced by bacteria on the outside surface of ant exoskeletons in response to pathogen exposure. Fungus-growing ants have a specialized mutualism with Pseudonocardia, a bacterium that lives on the ants’ exoskeletons and helps protect their fungal garden food source from harmful pathogens. The developed method allows for visualization of bacterial-derived compounds on the ant exoskeleton. This method demonstrates the capability to detect compounds that are specifically localized to the bacterial patch on ant exoskeletons, shows good reproducibility across individual ants, and achieves accurate mass measurements within 5 ppm error when using a high-resolution, accurate-mass mass spectrometer.

2018-07-26 | MTBLS471 | MetaboLights

Leaf-cutting ant feces LC-MS/MS

Project description:Leaf-cutting ants of the genera Acromyrmex and Atta live in mutualistic symbiosis with a basidiomycete fungus (Leucocoprinus gongylophorus), which they cultivate as fungal gardens in underground nest chambers. The ants provide the fungus with a growth substrate consisting of freshly cut leaf fragments. After new leaf fragments are brought into the nest, the ants chew them into smaller pieces and apply droplets of fecal fluid to the leaf pulp before depositing this mixed substrate in the fungus garden and inoculating it with small tufts of mycelium from older parts of the garden. Previous work has shown that the fecal fluid contains a range of digestive enzymes including proteases, amylases, chitinases, cellulases, pectinases, hemicellulases and laccases, and that most of these enzymes are produced by the fungal symbiont in specialized structures called gongylidia that the ants eat. After ingestion, the enzymes apparently pass unharmed through the alimentary channel of the ants and end up in the fecal fluid. Most likely this complex system is an adaptation of the ant-fungus symbiosis to a herbivorous lifestyle, as the ancient ancestors of the ants and the fungus lived as hunter-gatherers and saprotrophs, respectively. The promise of fecal fluid for getting insight into the molecular adaptations that enables the ant-fungus holosymbiont to live as a herbivore, led us to investigate the fecal fluid proteome using LC-MS/MS in order to get a more comprehensive picture of the repertoire of proteins present.

2021-01-12 | PXD016395 | Pride

ant fungus garden metagenome

Project description:Atta cephalotes Fungus Garden Metagenome

| PRJNA62039 | ENA

ant fungus garden metagenome

Project description:Atta colombica Fungus Garden Metagenome

| PRJNA39805 | ENA