TY - JOUR A1 - Vilcinskas, A. A1 - Schwabe, M. A1 - Brinkrolf, K. A1 - Plarre, Rüdiger A1 - Wielsch, N. A1 - Vogel, H. T1 - Larvae of the clothing moth Tineola bisselliella maintain gut bacteria that secrete enzyme cocktails to facilitate the digestion of keratin JF - Microorganisms N2 - The evolutionary success of insects is promoted by their association with beneficial microbes that enable the utilization of unusual diets. The synanthropic clothing moth Tineola bisselliella provides an intriguing example of this phenomenon. The caterpillars of this species have adapted to feed on keratin-rich diets such as feathers and wool, which cannot be digested by most other animals and are resistant to common digestive enzymes. Inspired by the hypothesis that this ability may be conferred by symbiotic microbes, we utilized a simple assay to detect keratinase activity and a method to screen gut bacteria for candidate enzymes, which were isolated from feather-fed larvae. The isolation of DNA from keratin-degrading bacterial strains followed by de novo genome sequencing resulted in the identification of a novel bacterial strain related to Bacillus sp. FDAARGOS_235. Genome Annotation identified 20 genes with keratinase domains. Proteomic analysis of the culture supernatant from this gut bacterium grown in non-nutrient buffer supplemented with feathers revealed several candidate enzymes potentially responsible for keratin degradation, including a thiol-disulfide oxidoreductase and multiple proteases. Our results suggest that the unusual diet of T. bisselliella larvae promotes their association with keratinolytic microorganisms and that the ability of larvae to feed on keratin can at least partially be attributed to bacteria that produce a cocktail of keratin-degrading enzymes. KW - Keratin KW - Insect biotechnology KW - Beneficial microbes KW - Symbiosis KW - Dietary adaptation KW - Tineola bisselliella PY - 2020 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-512309 DO - https://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms8091415 VL - 8 IS - 9 SP - 1415 PB - MDPI AN - OPUS4-51230 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Oberpaul, M. A1 - Zumkeller, C. M. A1 - Culver, T. A1 - Spohn, M. A1 - Mihajlovic1, S. A1 - Leis, B. A1 - Glaeser, S. P. A1 - Plarre, Rüdiger A1 - McMahon, Dino Peter A1 - Hammann, P. A1 - Schäberle, T. F. A1 - Glaeser, J. A1 - Vilcinskas, A. T1 - High-Throughput Cultivation for the Selective Isolation of Acidobacteria From Termite Nests JF - Frontiers in Microbiology N2 - Microbial communities in the immediate environment of socialized invertebrates can help to suppress pathogens, in part by synthesizing bioactive natural products. Here we characterized the core microbiomes of three termite species (genus Coptotermes) and their nest material to gain more insight into the diversity of termite-associated bacteria. Sampling a healthy termite colony over time implicated a consolidated and highly stable microbiome, pointing toward the fact that beneficial bacterial phyla play a major role in termite fitness. In contrast, there was a significant shift in the composition of the core microbiome in one nest during a fungal infection, affecting the abundance of wellcharacterized Streptomyces species (phylum Actinobacteria) as well as less-studied bacterial phyla such as Acidobacteria. High-throughput cultivation in microplates was implemented to isolate and identify these less-studied bacterial phylogenetic group. Amplicon sequencing confirmed that our method maintained the bacterial diversity of the environmental samples, enabling the isolation of novel Acidobacteriaceae and expanding the list of cultivated species to include two strains that may define new species within the genera Terracidiphilus and Acidobacterium. KW - Termite-associated microbes KW - Termites KW - Coptotermes KW - Core microbiome KW - Natural products discovery KW - Acidobacteria KW - underexplored phyla KW - Social insects PY - 2020 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-515283 DO - https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.597628 VL - 11 SP - 1 EP - 16 AN - OPUS4-51528 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -