The fungus-growing termite Macrotermes natalensis harbors bacillaene-producing Bacillus sp. that inhibit potentially antagonistic fungi

Soohyun Um; Antoine Fraimout; Panagiotis Sapountzis; Dong-Chan Oh; Michael Poulsen

doi:10.1038/srep03250

journal article Open Access Nov 19, 2013

The fungus-growing termite Macrotermes natalensis harbors bacillaene-producing Bacillus sp. that inhibit potentially antagonistic fungi

Soohyun Um Antoine Fraimout Panagiotis Sapountzis Dong-Chan Oh Michael Poulsen

Scientific Reports Vol. 3 No. 1 · Springer Science and Business Media LLC

View at Publisher Save 10.1038/srep03250

Abstract

AbstractThe ancient fungus-growing termite (Mactrotermitinae) symbiosis involves the obligate association between a lineage of higher termites and basidiomyceteTermitomycescultivar fungi. Our investigation of the fungus-growing termiteMacrotermes natalensisshows thatBacillusstrains fromM. natalensiscolonies produce a single major antibiotic, bacillaene A (1), which selectively inhibits known and putatively antagonistic fungi ofTermitomyces. Comparative analyses of the genomes of symbioticBacillusstrains revealed that they are phylogenetically closely related toBacillus subtilis, their genomes have high homology with more than 90% of ORFs being 100% identical and the sequence identities across the biosynthetic gene cluster for bacillaene are higher between termite-associated strains than to the cluster previously reported inB. subtilis. Our findings suggest that this lineage of antibiotic-producingBacillusmay be a defensive symbiont involved in the protection of the fungus-growing termite cultivar.

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References

Details

Published: Nov 19, 2013
Vol/Issue: 3(1)
License: View

Authors

Panagiotis Sapountzis

D

Dong-Chan Oh

Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, 92093-0204

M

Michael Poulsen

Section for Ecology and Evolution Department of Biology Centre for Social Evolution University of Copenhagen Copenhagen East Denmark

Cite This Article

Soohyun Um, Antoine Fraimout, Panagiotis Sapountzis, et al. (2013). The fungus-growing termite Macrotermes natalensis harbors bacillaene-producing Bacillus sp. that inhibit potentially antagonistic fungi. Scientific Reports, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep03250

The fungus-growing termite Macrotermes natalensis harbors bacillaene-producing Bacillus sp. that inhibit potentially antagonistic fungi

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