🎧 Ant Fungal Gardens with Dr. Marcy Balunas and Dr. Jonathan Klassen
Ants, microbes, fungi, forest fires, and more! Tune in to this week's podcast to learn about some really cool interspecies cross-talk.
In this week's episode of Foodie Pharmacology, we talk about ants that grow fungal gardens and how their farming methods are surprisingly similar to human agriculture! Our guests are Dr. Marcy Balunas from the University of Michigan and Dr. Jonathan Klassen from the University of Connecticut. They discuss a new study that shows ants and microbes communicate using chemicals. We discuss a new tool called MPACT that makes it easier to analyze complex chemical data. Looking ahead, the team plans to study how these ant-microbe partnerships handle challenges like forest fires due to climate change and to identify other chemicals involved in these relationships. If you're interested in how the natural world works, this episode is for you! You can follow their work on Twitter at BalunasLab and klassenlab.
Link to the paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2219373120
Link to the Balunas Lab: https://balunas.lab.medicine.umich.edu/
Link to the Klassen Lab: https://jonathanklassenlab.com/
About Marcy
Dr. Marcy Balunas is an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan Department of Microbiology and Immunology and the Department of Medicinal Chemistry. Dr. Balunas’ research group focuses on host-associated microbial communities as unique sources for natural products drug discovery, using these to search for new, targeted drug leads and to address critical questions within the broader field of chemical ecology. Her research ties together an in-depth understanding of how specialized metabolites function in their environment with the application of these insights to discover new medicines for a wide range of human diseases.
Dr. Balunas received a dual B.A./B.A. degree in Chemistry and Biology from the University of Rochester. She completed her M.S. degree in Plant Ecology with Dr. Robin Kimmerer from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. She studied with Dr. A. Douglas Kinghorn for her Ph.D. degree in Pharmacognosy from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She then conducted her postdoctoral research on marine natural products drug discovery with Dr. Bill Gerwick at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego in conjunction with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama City, Panama. Dr. Balunas began her independent career at the University of Connecticut Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, moving in May 2022 to UMich.
About Jonathan
Dr. Jonathan Klassen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Connecticut. He has studied the fungus-growing ant symbiosis for the past 13 years, first as an NSERC (Canada) Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and since 2013 at UConn. He has collaborated in this work with Dr. Marcy Balunas for the past 10 years, funded by the National Science Foundation (among others).
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Yours in health, Dr. Quave
Cassandra L. Quave, Ph.D. is a scientist, author, speaker, podcast host, wife, mother, explorer, and professor at Emory University School of Medicine. She teaches college courses and leads a group of research scientists studying medicinal plants to find new life-saving drugs from nature. She hosts the Foodie Pharmacology podcast and writes the Nature’s Pharmacy newsletter to share the science behind natural medicines. To support her effort, consider a paid or founding subscription, with founding members receiving an autographed 1st edition hardcover copy of her book, The Plant Hunter.
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