Gut bacterial and fungal communities of the domesticated silkworm (Bombyx mori) and wild mulberry-feeding relatives

Bombyx mori , the domesticated silkworm, is of great importance as a silk producer and as a powerful experimental model for the basic and applied research. Similar to other animals, abundant microorganisms live inside the silkworm gut; however, surprisingly, the microbiota of this model insect has n...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The ISME Journal Vol. 12; no. 9; pp. 2252 - 2262
Main Authors: Chen, Bosheng, Du, Kaiqian, Sun, Chao, Vimalanathan, Arunprasanna, Liang, Xili, Li, Yong, Wang, Baohong, Lu, Xingmeng, Li, Lanjuan, Shao, Yongqi
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.09.2018
Oxford University Press
Subjects:
631/158/855
631/326/2565/2134
Animals
Bacteria - classification
Bacteria - genetics
Bacteria - isolation & purification
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Bombyx - growth & development
Bombyx - microbiology
Bombyx mori
Butterflies & moths
Communities
Deoxyribonucleic acid
DNA
Domestication
Ecology
Egg production
Environmental factors
Evolutionary Biology
Feeding
Fungi
Fungi - classification
Fungi - genetics
Fungi - isolation & purification
Gastrointestinal Microbiome
Instars
Intestinal microflora
Life Sciences
Microbial Ecology
Microbial Genetics and Genomics
Microbiology
Microbiota
Microorganisms
Morus
Moths - microbiology
Ribonucleic acid
RNA
Silk
Silkworms
ISSN:1751-7362, 1751-7370, 1751-7370
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Bombyx mori , the domesticated silkworm, is of great importance as a silk producer and as a powerful experimental model for the basic and applied research. Similar to other animals, abundant microorganisms live inside the silkworm gut; however, surprisingly, the microbiota of this model insect has not been well characterized to date. Here, we comprehensively characterized the gut microbiota of the domesticated silkworm and its wild relatives. Comparative analyses with the mulberry-feeding moths Acronicta major and Diaphania pyloalis revealed a highly diverse but distinctive silkworm gut microbiota despite thousands of years of domestication, and stage-specific signatures in both total (DNA-based) and active (RNA-based) bacterial populations, dominated by the phyla Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, and Bacteroidetes. Most fungal sequences were assigned to the phyla Ascomycota and Basidiomycota. Environmental factors, including diet and human manipulation (egg production), likely influence the silkworm gut composition. Despite a lack of spatial variation along the gut, microbial community shifts were apparent between early instars and late instars, in concert with host developmental changes. Our results demonstrate that the gut microbiota of silkworms assembles into increasingly identical community throughout development, which differs greatly from those of other mulberry-feeding lepidopterans from the same niche, highlighting host-specific effects on microbial associations and the potential roles these communities play in host biology.
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ISSN:1751-7362
1751-7370
1751-7370
DOI:10.1038/s41396-018-0174-1