Research For Symbiotic Bacterial Community Structure Termites Gut

Lignocellulose degradation is hot and difficult in lignocellulose efficient utilization via resources and energy change. Termites play an important role in lignocellulose cycle in the nature, and can provide biochemical catalysts for lignocellulose converted to biofuels. As a representative of termites, research and use of all kinds of natural effective biological transformation system (abundant microflora), which provide a possible new way to solve the international problem of efficient conversion of biomass. This research method as follows:Four kinds of termites are sampled from Henan province, two kinds higher termites (R.flaviceps? T.ampliceps) and two kinds lower termites (O.formosanus?M.shanchgensis) were enrolled in the present cross-sectional study; and three kinds of substrate were comprised of wood pieces?maize straw powder and filter paper. Different termites (Four kinds of termites) in the same substrate environment (wood pieces) and the same termites (T.ampliceps--Only exist in Henan) in different substrate environment (Lignocellulose content (%):Maize straw powder> Corn stalk powder>wood pieces) are as the study design strategy. Based on un-culturable microbial metagenomic technology, through high-throughput sequencing and data analysis, we can have a comprehensive understanding of termite gut microbial diversity and community composition. This can provides the theory basis for rational design and build a variety of natural, efficient and stable lignocellulose degradation of bionic system (synthetic biology), meanwhile, this also can lay the theoretical foundation for the further improve lignocellulose bioconversion technology. The major results include as below:First, we extracted whole genomes of microorganisms in the guts of termites using OMEGA Extraction Kit. And then, we get 16S sequences by random amplification. What's more, we construct the data analysis platform to process 454 sequence based on the 16S data of microorganisms in the guts of termites. The platform consists of some bioinformatics tools and lots of in-house scripts, which can be professional and efficient for our research.Second, we study the microbial communities in the guts of 4 different kinds of termites with the same culture condition using the platform described above. Conclusions of our research are described below.(1) There are significant differences among the microbial communities in the guts of 4 different kinds of termites with the same culture condition. (2) In our study, the diversity of species in higher termites is much higher than that of lower termites. (3) Some phylums of bacteria are more abundant in lower termites, including Spirochaetes, Elusimicrobia, Verrucomicrobia. On the contrary, the abundances of some phylums of bacteria are low, including Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Synergistetes, TM7, Chlorobi. From these results, we conclude that the differences of intestinal microbial communities in termites can be used as a bio-marker for the study of termite phylogeny analysis. Furthermore, the difference in lignocellulose degradation mechanism can be instructive to explore the mechanism of cellulose degradation in termites.Third, we study the microbial communities in the guts of T.ampliceps under 3 different culture conditions (wood, straw and paper respectively) based on the platform described above. Conclusions of this research are described below. The microbial communities are regulated by the culture conditions. The abundances of some phylums of bacteria decrease with the change of culture conditions, such as Spirochaete, while others increase,such as Proteobacteria and Thermi. Specific phylums of bacteria can be more abundant in specific culture condition. For example, the abundances of Spirochaetes, Planctomycetes and Acidobacteria are much higher in the original ecological environment. However, the abundances of Bacteroidetes and Fusobacteria are higher in the culture condition of straw. We deduce that these phylums of bacteria are specific to the degradation of cellulose, which can be the focal points in further researches.