The Termite Group I Phylum is Highly Diverse and Widespread in the Environment

Overview

Journal Appl Environ Microbiol

Specialties Environmental Health
Microbiology

Date 2007 Aug 21

PMID 17704269

Citations 17

Authors

Daniel P R Herlemann

Oliver Geissinger

Andreas Brune

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The bacterial candidate phylum Termite Group I (TG-1) presently consists mostly of "Endomicrobia," which are endosymbionts of flagellate protists occurring exclusively in the hindguts of termites and wood-feeding cockroaches. Here, we show that public databases contain many, mostly undocumented 16S rRNA gene sequences from other habitats that are affiliated with the TG-1 phylum but are only distantly related to "Endomicrobia." Phylogenetic analysis of the expanded data set revealed several diverse and deeply branching lineages comprising clones from many different habitats. In addition, we designed specific primers to explore the diversity and environmental distribution of bacteria in the TG-1 phylum.

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