Microbial diversity in termite nest

In the present study, the microbial diversity of termite nest was studied using bacterial tag encoded amplicon pyrosequencing by both culture-dependent and culture-independent approaches. A total of 10,793 and 4,777 high-quality reads were obtained in culture-independent and culture-dependent approaches respectively. The former approach revealed dominant phyla Proteobacteria (32%) and Actinobacteria (20%), whereas the latter approach revealed Firmicutes (74%) and Proteobacteria (22%) as the most dominant phyla. The significant variation in the microbial diversity and composition of termitarium assessed by the two approaches could be due to the fact that culture-dependent approach explored only selected groups of microbial population, whereas metagenomic approach explored complete microbial diversity of termitarium, which provides credence to the application of metagenomic strategy to explore novel microbial species.