Special Applications of Insect Gut Microflora in Kinetic Studies of Microbial Substrate Removal Rates

摘要

Because of the highly controlled environment in which they live and their unique genetic history, the gut microflora of some insects may be useful for studying some of the underlying principles that govern the kinetics of uptake and metabolism of substrates by microorganisms. In the present studies, D-glucose mineralization kinetics were investigated using facultative anaerobes from termite gut microflora to test the similarity of kinetics principles developed previously with aquatic environmental microbial samples. As with environmental samples, heterogeneous kinetics were observed in the gut microflora, with increasingly enhanced glucose removal rates at diminishing amended substrate concentrations. These results lend support to the general applicability of these kinetics principles to a diversity of mixed microbial populations having greatly dissimilar environmental histories.