Scientists, long fascinated by the humble termite's ability to turn wood into energy for life, are examining the hundreds of species of microbes within its gut to learn how the process is carried out. Oak Ridge National Laboratory researcher Mircea Podar is examining the data to uncover how individual microbes signal or communicate with each other within the confines of the insect's gut tract. And he as learned that high number of genes are employed in chemotaxis, or movement toward or away from conditions in the environment that are either favorable or unfavorable to their existence. The work is one piece of a larger effort to sequence the microbial life present in the termite and ultimately apply that research toward efforts to, for example, derive biofuels from cellulosic sources such as grasses and trees. The work was recently published in the journal Nature.
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