The role of gut symbionts from termites: a unique hidden player from yeasts

Abstract:

The capability to degrade lignocellulose in a variety of termite species is important for global carbon recycling on lignocellulosic biomass. This unique capability from termites relies on their special "gut digestome" such as bacterial, archaeal, yeast, or other eukaryotic symbionts. However, to date, their highly specialized gut systems of such insects are not yet fully understood regarding their unique symbiont functions and their potential values applied in biotechnology or other relevant fields, particularly for the group of various yeast symbionts. In recent years, there is a growing evidence to demonstrate the symbiotic yeast importance and their widespread distributions in various termite digestive systems, as well as their unique functions played in termite-symbiont interactions. Along with more yeast species to be identified from insect gut systems in the past two decades, their potential functions and relevant mechanisms interacted with host insects and other gut symbionts have been reported, which may be related to host nutrition, essential enzymes for biomass processing, intermediate chemical compounds, suppressing external pathogens, even colony outbreeding, etc. This review paper would mainly focus on the recent research work on yeast symbionts identified from termite gut and their potential values and functions applied in different fields.

Key words:termites;fungi;yeasts;symbiosis;lignocellulose;biotechnology