Question about actinomyces

[Fruitfly]

Hi everyone,
When there a lack of carbon source in actinomyces' microenvironment, do they use the antibiotic produced by them as energy supply ?

[victor]

antibiotic produced by actinobacteria is a secondary metabolites produced in the stationery phase. In other words, when you do a batch culture on this bacteria, it would produce antibiotics when the carbon source is already limited. So, I can say yes, actinobacteria can degrade this antibiotics to obtain carbon source not only from the antibiotics they produce but also carbon source from another organisms which is killed by this antibiotics. But if I were an actinobacteria and I'm asked which one I prefer, I'd say that eating carbon from the killed one would be better. I won't eat my own pee

[Fruitfly]

Thanks for your reply, I also thinks that like you. There is a article on recently published "sicence" magazine mentioning about using antibiotics of bacteria as carbon source but not actinomyces. But I think they do, too. Your reply so funny .finally, thanks so much

[victor]

hmm...carbon source is able to get from antibiotics degradation, but for energy sources I don't think that antibiotics provide it.

[canalon]

Yes Victor. You are out of date. Not that I was overly surprised with that but as fruitfly said there was paper in Science 1 or 2 month ago on the subject. How a team found some environmental bacteria growing with quinolone as sole carbon source.

[victor]

is there any link to get that paper? maybe I can read it to update my info

[canalon]

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/a ... 0/5872/100

But it is behind a paywall.

[victor]

Yup, I've seen that and I'm stuck in front of the paywall...
hmm....so surprising that the antibiotic-consuming bacteria were closely related to human pathogen....