Thursday, August 14, 2008 - 4:00 PM
S181
From Bugs to Biofuels – the Termite Hindgut Metagenome
Peter Luginbühl, Bioinformatics, Verenium Corporation, 4955 Directors Place, San Diego, CA 92121
Termites are an extremely successful group of wood-degrading organisms and are therefore important both for their roles in carbon turnover in the environment and as potential sources of biochemical catalysts. Termites ingest wood and convert it to fermentable sugars by exploiting the metabolic capabilities of microbes living symbiotically in their hindguts – the process is fast and efficient, typically achieving 95% conversion in 24 hours.
Here we present a metagenomic analysis of the microbial community resident in the hindgut paunch of a wood-feeding ‘higher’ Nasutitermes species (which do not contain cellulose-fermenting protozoa) to show the presence of a large, diverse set of bacterial genes for cellulose and xylan hydrolysis. Many of these genes were expressed in vivo or had cellulase activity in vitro, and further analyses implicate gut spirochete and fibrobacter species in plant lignocellulose degradation.
By mining the termite digestive system, Verenium expects to identify new, highly efficient enzymes that can potentially be adapted to process cellulosic biomass into sugars to produce cellulosic ethanol at an industrial scale.
Here we present a metagenomic analysis of the microbial community resident in the hindgut paunch of a wood-feeding ‘higher’ Nasutitermes species (which do not contain cellulose-fermenting protozoa) to show the presence of a large, diverse set of bacterial genes for cellulose and xylan hydrolysis. Many of these genes were expressed in vivo or had cellulase activity in vitro, and further analyses implicate gut spirochete and fibrobacter species in plant lignocellulose degradation.
By mining the termite digestive system, Verenium expects to identify new, highly efficient enzymes that can potentially be adapted to process cellulosic biomass into sugars to produce cellulosic ethanol at an industrial scale.