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Insect microbial symbionts as a novel source for biotechnology

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Abstract

Insecta is the most diverse and largest class of animals on Earth, appearing together with the emergence of the first terrestrial ecosystem. Owing to this great diversity and long-term coexistence, an amazing variety of symbiotic microorganisms have adapted specifically to insects as hosts. Insect symbionts not only participate in many relationships with the hosts but also represent a novel resource for biotechnological applications. The exploitation of mutualistic symbiosis represents a promising area to search for bioactive compounds and new enzymes for potential clinical, industrial or environmental applications. Moreover, the manipulation of parasitic symbiosis has particular potential to solve practical problems for the control of agricultural pests and disease vectors. Although the study of microbial symbionts has been impaired by the unculturability of most symbionts, the rapidly growing catalogue of microbial genomes and the application of modern genetic techniques provide an alternative approach to using these microbes. This minireview presents examples of microbial symbionts isolated from insects for emerging biotechnological use and illuminates new ways for discovering microorganisms of applied value from a particularly promising source.

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Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank Dr. Ian Maddox for the invitation and encouragement to submit this paper. We also thank the editor and four anonymous reviewers for insightful comments on the manuscript, and we gratefully acknowledge the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31601906), the Modern Agricultural Industry Technology System (Grant No. CARS-18-ZJ0302), Zhejiang province analysis and testing science and technology project (Grant No. 2018C37060) and Max Planck Society for their financial support in our work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Sericulture and Apiculture, College of Animal Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, People’s Republic of China

    Sen Xie, Yahua Lan & Yongqi Shao

  2. Analysis Center of Agrobiology and Environmental Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, People’s Republic of China

    Chao Sun

  3. Key Laboratory for Molecular Animal Nutrition, Ministry of Education, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Yongqi Shao

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  1. Sen Xie
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  2. Yahua Lan
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  3. Chao Sun
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  4. Yongqi Shao
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Correspondence to Yongqi Shao.

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Xie, S., Lan, Y., Sun, C. et al. Insect microbial symbionts as a novel source for biotechnology. World J Microbiol Biotechnol 35, 25 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-019-2599-8

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