Advancing approaches to cultivate industrially and ecologically relevant microorganisms from termite guts

The termite gut harbours a remarkably dense and diverse consortium of symbiotic microbes, encompassing archaeal, bacterial, and eukaryotic taxa. These symbiotic communities hold intricate ecological processes and a pronounced potential for exploitation across multifaceted domains, including industrially important enzymes, biofuels, pharmaceuticals, and bioremediation. Despite the conspicuous richness, a substantial portion of microbial assemblages inhabiting the termite gut remains undiscovered and inadequately characterized. Although traditional culture-based and culture-independent molecular-based technologies are broadly used to study termite gut microbiota, they more recent frequently encounter limitations in the isolation, culturing, and characterization of less prevalent microbial lineages and are biased toward certain taxa. The rapid development of molecular techniques has greatly promoted the identification and genomic potential of microbes in termite guts, revealing hidden diversity and application potential. However, limitations in culture-based approaches to build on genomic insights have hampered our understanding of the ecology of most of these microbes and the capitalisation on their properties. To help improve culturomics approaches for termite gut microbes, we provide an overview of past and emerging methodologies for isolation and cultivation of symbiotic microbes. In doing so, we highlight future directions and current challenges that need to be overcome to advance these approaches.