Metagenomic analysis suggests unique gut-microbiota composition and GH family constitution of Macrotermes annandalei

Energy supply is a major concern of human survival and development, and that concern demands new sources of renewable clean energy. Cellulose, as a renewable energy material is affected by low activity and high cost of cellulose. Studies of cellulose degrading bacterial microbiota in insect intestine have revealed that these potential microbes can be used as a rich resource of cellulose degrading strains. Here, the present study involves metagenomic sequencing of intestinal microbes of Macrotermes annandalei by Illumina PE150 and a total of 401,190 scaftigs were obtained. Open Reading frame (ORF) species annotation showed that the largest proportion of them belong to the phylum of Bacteroides, followed by Protobacteia, Firmicutes and Mucoromycota. Mapping to the CAZy database indicates that 4,539 genes encoding of glycoside hydrolase belongs to 109 distinct CAZy families. The results provide a theoretical basis for exploring new candidate bacteria for efficient cellulose degradation to obtain high cellulose resource yield.