W.M. Keck Science Department Assistant Professor of Chemistry Ethan van Arnam co-authored a paper, published in Applied and Environmental Biology, that explored how symbiotic bacteria help fungus-growing ants suppress fungal pathogens through the production of antifungal compounds. “Animal hosts often benefit from chemical defenses provided by microbes,” the co-authors explain. “These molecular defenses are a potential source of novel antibiotics and offer opportunities for understanding how antibiotics are used in ecological contexts with defined interspecies interactions.”