"Antibiotics in Nature and Medicine" 

Filamentous actinomycetes make many bioactive specialised metabolites and these natural products account for around 60% of all known antibiotics. Plants and invertebrates form mutualisms with these bacteria and use their antibiotics to protect themselves against infection. We study the roles of actinomycete bacteria and their specialised metabolites in the nests of the leafcutter ant Acromyrmex echinatior and in the roots of plants such as Arabidopsis thaliana and bread wheat Triticum aestivum. Here I will present recent results which reveal how these higher organisms recruit these bacteria to their microbiomes.