Published in

American Society for Microbiology, mSphere, 3(4), 2019

DOI: 10.1128/msphere.00165-19

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Fungiculture in Termites Is Associated with a Mycolytic Gut Bacterial Community

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Understanding functional capacities of gut microbiomes is important to improve our understanding of symbiotic associations. Here, we use peptide-based functional annotation to show that the gut microbiomes of fungus-farming termites code for a wealth of enzymes that likely target the fungal diet the termites eat. Comparisons to other termites showed that fungus-growing termite guts have relatively more fungal cell wall-degrading enzyme genes, whereas wood-feeding termite gut communities have relatively more plant cell wall-degrading enzyme genes. Across termites with different diets, the dominant biomass-degrading enzymes are predominantly coded for by the most abundant bacterial taxa, suggesting tight links between diet and gut community compositions.