
Nitric oxide radicals are emitted by wasp eggs to kill mold fungi - bookofjoe
https://elifesciences.org/articles/43718
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semi-extrinsic
Since the domain was unknown to me, and there was suddenly two stories from
them on the front page, I was a bit skeptical that this was some low-quality
publisher.

But "eLife was founded in 2011 by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max
Planck Society and the Wellcome Trust ", so they seem legit.

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colechristensen
Your sinuses also produce NO theorized to have the same antimicrobial effect
as well as a sort of regulatory hormone as the gas is inhaled.

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pazimzadeh
It's well known that reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen
species (RNS) are used to fend off both infection and non-cooperative host
cells i.e. cancerous cells.

But nitric oxide (NO) can spontaneously react to nitrite (NO2-) and nitrate
(NO3-), and nitrate can actually be used as an electron acceptor by some
bacteria in mouse intestines.
([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705454/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705454/))

The article points out that wasps transfer protective bacteria to their
larvae, so it could have been that secreting NO is really just an indirect way
of cultivating more of these helpful bacteria. However, they showed that the
protective effect against mold was the same whether or not nitrate was
present, which shows that the mechanism really is direct killing of the mold
by the eggs themselves!

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VygmraMGVl
I believe you are conflating Nitric Oxide (NO) with Nitric Oxide Radicals
(NO•). While Nitric Oxide isn't stable in the presence of Oxygen, Nitric Oxide
Radicals will react with pretty much any species they come into contact with.
From the viewpoint of an organism, they are more useful as a weapon than as
any sort of controlled energy source.

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AtomicOrbital
reminds me of the dynamics of survival whereby yeast has evolved to exude
alcohol to thwart off bacteria as they both attempt to colonize a food source
like some fallen apple

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zeristor
Indeed it has been suggested that early forms of life produced oxygen as toxin
as an evolutionary advantage.

