Changes in termites feeding diets for gut micro-organisms selection and further cultivation

Termites gut may overcome important dietary perturbations, initial diversity acting as key point buffering effects on host, although termites possess their own enzymatic system. Some artificial diets permitted a simplification of the lower termites gut symbiotic system, which could be used as first step in symbionts isolation and cultivation. Preliminary assay of cultivation actually gave encouraging results. Proteomic proved to be suitable tool to investigate such a complex system. Nevertheless, for some symbionts very few genes are sequenced, which should lead to more targeted proteomic studies. Protein chromatography will allow to split up the proteome and more accurate analysis.