_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ *Corresponding author: Email: asha.poonia@cblu.ac.in, asha.poonia@gmail.com; Review Article UTTAR PRADESH JOURNAL OF ZOOLOGY 41(22): 9-23, 2020 ISSN: 0256-971X (P) TERMITE GUT: HOME TO MICROBIOME AMIT KUMAR 1 , ASHA POONIA 1* , RADHIKA SHARMA 2 , MONIKA JANGRA 1 , RAKESH SEHRAWAT 3 AND REKHA SANSANWAL 1 1 Faculty of Life Sciences, Chaudhary Bansi Lal University, Bhiwani, India. 2 Department of Biology and Environmental Sciences, CSK HPKV Palampur, India. 3 College of Basic Sciences and Humanities, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, India. AUTHORS’ CONTRIBUTIONS This work was carried out in collaboration among all authors. Author AP designed the study. Author AK wrote the first draft of the manuscript. Authors Radhika Sharma and MJ managed the literature searches. Authors Rakesh Sehrawat and Rekha Sansanwal gave the final shape to the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. Article Information Editor(s): (1) Dr. Juan Carlos Troiano, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Reviewers: (1) Alane Ayana Vieira de Oliveira Couto, Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco, Brazil. (2) S. Chozhavendhan, V. S. B. Engineering College, India. Received: 22 August 2020 Accepted: 28 October 2020 Published: 16 December 2020 ABSTRACT Present manuscript reviews of microbial diversities present in termites’ gut. Microbial communities are the essential players of the termite gut due to several benefits arising from them which are useful for their host survival. The termites gut consists of one to several compartments, which harbor predominantly bacteria, protists (only in lower termites), some archaeal species (methanogenic or nonmethanogenic lineages), few species of fungi and bacteriophages which live in mutualistic relationship and provide nutrition by degrading the tough plant biomass. These microbiomes convert the cellulose/hemicellulose into long chain fatty acid to be later converted into short chain fatty acid which is finally absorbed by termites. Digestive enzymes such as carbohydrate active enzymes (CAZymes), proteases, lysozymes, chitinases, peroxidases amongst others play essential role in termites’ gut for converting the cellulose or other plant parts into nutrients. Environmental biotic factors, abiotic factors and diet also affect the physicochemical condition of gut compartments and the diversity of microbes in their gut. Supply of methanogenic substrates decides the archaeal diversities in the gut. First part of the review provides details of termite gut compartments and enzymes involved while the later part enlists the microbiome which makes termites “ecosystem engineers”. Lot of research is going on based on metagenome- assembled genomes for termite gut microbiota. Since, most of such studies reveal higher ranks such as phylum, class etc. only. Present manuscript is the first attempt to enlist all species of microbes obtained from termite gut and reviews present research and future prospects of this research. Keywords: Termites; termite gut; microbiome; isopteran; protists; termite gut enzymes; archaea; gut bacteria; gut archaea; methanogenic bacteria; chitinases; gut environment; gut pH; gut protists; insect gut.