Symbiotic and non-symbiotic micro flora of termite gut: a unique nonhuman agricultural system that can recycle photo-synthetically fixed carbon and nutrients
Journal Title: Journal of Pharmacy Research - Year 2011, Vol 4, Issue 4
Abstract
Termites are xylophagous insects which house a range of microorganisms including protozoan, bacteria and fungi inside their gut. These microbes associate to form mutualistic associations that help the termites to degrade the plant-derived biomass. These gut symbionts specially fungi predigest plant substrate and maintain food supply to termites. Besides this, fungi secrete few chemicals from decayed wood, which attract termites for feeding. Interestingly, presence of microflora in the gut makes termites able to degrade wood and wood constituents such as cellulose and hemi-cellulose. In turn, termites help the fungi by transporting and spreading them to new areas. Fungi play an important role in nutrition of termites by being a direct source of food, or by modifying it and do recycling of photo-synthetically fixed carbon with the aid of symbiotic gut micro-flora. These also play important role in termite survival and possess nitrogen fixation genes (nifH) that show potential for nitrogen fixation in natural environment. But, few termite species lack this gene. After being development of appropriate microbial technology, this unique nonhuman agricultural system can be used for the improvement of soil fertility, biological nitrogen fixation and in pest management. From scientific standpoint, if products and biological processes of novel microbial strains will be identified these might have wider applications in agriculture and industry. Certainly, in coming future it would become a part of sustainable agricultural development. The purpose of present article is to signify the importance of gut symbionts in termite life mainly in establishment of colony, decomposition of food material, recycling of nutrients and survival in adverse environmental conditions
Authors and Affiliations
Ravi Kant Upadhyay
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP85846
- DOI -
- Views 89
- Downloads 0
Standardization of Neorise Granules
In recent years there is a spurt in the interest regarding survival of Ayurvedic forms of medication. In the global perspective, there is a shift towards the use of medicine of herbal origin, as the dangers and the sh...
Toxicological Effect of Kerosene Contaminated Diet on the Lipid Profile of Albino Rats
This research work was undertaken to investigate the effect of kerosene on the lipid profile parameters which include total cholesterol (CHO), high density lipoprotein (HDL), low density lipoprotein (LDL), and triglyceri...
Management of hypertension in pregnancy: A review
Hypertension in pregnancy is the most common cause of maternal death, with a risk of approximately 10 deaths / million pregnancies in the UK. Hypertension in pregnancy is also the most common cause of stillbirth and neon...
Growth inhibitory activity of selected microalgae and cyanobacteria towards human cervical carcinoma cells (HeLa)
Although a large number of strains have been shown to possess anticancer activity, the microalgal and cyanobacterial potential is still largely unexplored. The present study was aimed to evaluate and compare the growth...
In vitro evaluation of free radical scavenging activity of medicinal plant Polyalthia longifolia (Sonner.) Thw. leaf extract
The present study was aimed at investigating the antioxidant activities of the ethanol and chloroform extracts of the leaves of Polyalthia longifolia (Sonner.) Thw. (Annonaceae). The antioxidant activities of the extrac...