Falk Warnecke, Microbial Ecology Program, Joint Genome Institute, DOE Co-authors: Natalia Ivanova, Martin Allgaier, Nikos Kyrpides, Rudolf... » More

Falk Warnecke, Microbial Ecology Program, Joint Genome Institute, DOE Co-authors: Natalia Ivanova, Martin Allgaier, Nikos Kyrpides, Rudolf Scheffrahn, and Phil Hugenholtz Termites are highly efficient in degrading lignocellulosic biomass. In a recent metagenomic study we showed for the first time that microbes inhabiting the termite hindgut encode hundreds of carbohydrate-active enzymes, e.g. glycosyl hydrolases (GHs) and tens of carbohydrate binding modules (CBMs) and by implication are responsible for the bulk of the lignocellulose deconstruction (1). In this initial study we analyzed the metagenome of the microbial hindgut community of the drywood-feeding higher termite species Nasutitermes corniger collected from a nest in a pristine tropical rainforest in Costa Rica. Here we present results from a similar study however focusing on termites exposed to different food sources. We analyzed the hindgut of laboratory-kept N. corniger, as well as two samples of the grass-feeding termite species Amitermes wheeleri. The lab-kept termites have been maintained in captivity for several years in the laboratory of Prof. R. Scheffrahn. A key difference between the wild and lab-kept Nasuti termes is diet; the Costa Rican termites are foragers and most likely fed on a wide variety of plant species while the lab counterparts were fed almost exclusively on Brazilian pepper wood. The two samples of grass-feeding termites were collected in Texas tentatively representing different feeding regimes as well: the first was collected from pristine grassland, while the second from within pieces of cow dung on pasture land. In summary this collection of samples allows several interesting comparisons: (i) drywood-feeding versus grass-feeding termite hindgut microbial communities, (ii) wild versus lab-kept drywood feeders, and (iii) pristine grassland versus cow dung feeding Amitermes. The GH and CBM profiles from the same termite species are very similar whereas the profiles show pronounced differences between species. In addition to the metagenomic sequence data we prepared a 16S rRNA PCR library to analyze the microbial community composition.

« Hide