ArticleThe ISME journal2020
Division of functional roles for termite gut protists revealed by single-cell transcriptomes.
Article in The ISME journal, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 53 citations in OpenAlex.
- Caste-Associated Gut Microbial Diversity and Predicted Functional Profiles inInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- Functions of the cell wall polysaccharide schizophyllan during vegetative growth ofCell surface (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2026Article
- Article
- Comparative metagenomic analysis of gut microbiota inFrontiers in insect science · 2026Article
- Evolution and ecology of commensal gut protists: recent advances.Current opinion in genetics & development · 2025Review
- Article
- Functional division of labor in motility, lignocellulose digestion, and nitrogen metabolism revealed for the Mixotricha paradoxa holobiont.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Unveiling lignocellulolytic potential: a genomic exploration of bacterial lineages within the termite gut.Microbiome · 2024Article
- Arthropod prey type drives decomposition rates and microbial community processes.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2024Article
- Insect-microbe interactions and their influence on organisms and ecosystems.Ecology and evolution · 2024Review
- Broadly neutralizing antibodies for HIV prevention: a comprehensive review and future perspectives.Clinical microbiology reviews · 2024Review
- Transmission dynamics of symbiotic protist communities in the termite gut: association with host adult eclosion and dispersal.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Facultative endosymbiosis between cellulolytic protists and methanogenic archaea in the gut of the Formosan termiteISME communications · 2024Article
- Emergence of putative energy parasites within Clostridia revealed by genome analysis of a novel endosymbiotic clade.The ISME journal · 2023Article
- A holobiont approach towards polysaccharide degradation by the highly compartmentalised gut system of the soil-feeding higher termite Labiotermes labralis.BMC genomics · 2023Article
- Change of termite hindgut metabolome and bacteria after captivity indicates the hindgut microbiota provides nutritional factors to the host.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2023Article
- Oxidative cleavage of polysaccharides by a termite-derivedGreen chemistry : an international journal and green chemistry resource : GC · 2022Article
- The functional evolution of termite gut microbiota.Microbiome · 2022Article
- Article
- Darwinian genomics and diversity in the tree of life.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The microbiome in the hindgut of wood-feeding termites comprises various species of bacteria, archaea, and protists. This gut community is indispensable for the termite, which thrives solely on recalcitrant and nitrogen-poor wood. However, the difficulty in culturing these microorganisms has hindered our understanding of the function of each species in the gut. Although protists predominate in the termite gut microbiome and play a major role in wood digestion, very few culture-independent studies have explored the contribution of each species to digestion. Here, we report single-cell transcriptomes of four protists species comprising the protist population in worldwide pest Coptotermes formosanus. Comparative transcriptomic analysis revealed that the expression patterns of the genes involved in wood digestion were different among species, reinforcing their division of roles in wood degradation. Transcriptomes, together with enzyme assays, also suggested that one of the protists, Cononympha leidyi, actively degrades chitin and assimilates it into amino acids. We propose that C. leidyi contributes to nitrogen recycling and inhibiting infection from entomopathogenic fungi through chitin degradation. Two of the genes for chitin degradation were further revealed to be acquired via lateral gene transfer (LGT) implying the importance of LGT in the evolution of symbiosis. Our single-cell-based approach successfully characterized the function of each protist in termite hindgut and explained why the gut community includes multiple species.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.