TERMITE GUT: HOME TO MICROBIOME

Present manuscript reviews of microbial diversities present in termites’ gut. Microbial communities are the essential players of the termite gut due to several benefits arising from them which are useful for their host survival. The termites gut consists of one to several compartments, which harbor predominantly bacteria, protists (only in lower termites), some archaeal species (methanogenic or nonmethanogenic lineages), few species of fungi and bacteriophages which live in mutualistic relationship and provide nutrition by degrading the tough plant biomass. These microbiomes convert the cellulose/hemicellulose into long chain fatty acid to be later converted into short chain fatty acid which is finally absorbed by termites. Digestive enzymes such as carbohydrate active enzymes (CAZymes), proteases, lysozymes, chitinases, peroxidases amongst others play essential role in termites’ gut for converting the cellulose or other plant parts into nutrients. Environmental biotic factors, abiotic factors and diet also affect the physicochemical condition of gut compartments and the diversity of microbes in their gut. Supply of methanogenic substrates decides the archaeal diversities in the gut. First part of the review provides details of termite gut compartments and enzymes involved while the later part enlists the microbiome which makes termites “ecosystem engineers”. Lot of research is going on based on metagenome- assembled genomes for termite gut microbiota. Since, most of such studies reveal higher ranks such as phylum, class etc. only. Present manuscript is the first attempt to enlist all species of microbes obtained from termite gut and reviews present research and future prospects of this research.