The strategies of isolation of insect gut microorganisms

Abstract:

Insects are the most diverse and abundant group of animals in nature. They are highly adaptive and play important roles in various ecological environments. As a special microbial niche, the intestinal tracts of insects offer habitats for diverse symbiotic microorganisms, many of which are different from those originated from the other environments. Studies based on pure cultures show that the symbiotic microbes are associated with insect nutrition, development and immunity, etc. Therefore, isolation pure cultures are the basis for the discovery of new microorganisms, new genes and new functions. However, up to now, only about 1% of microorganisms in nature are cultivable. To solve this problem, microbiologists have put great efforts to develop many new culture techniques and strategies during the past two decades. With the use of these new strategies, many uncultured microbes have been successfully isolated, which greatly enriched our understanding of the physiological functions of symbiotic microorganisms. In this paper we reviewed the latest advances of the novel strategies used for the cultivation of symbiotic microorganisms in insect guts, as well as the future perspective of this field.