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However, termites cannot digest the wood alone. Instead, they rely on a non-bacterial protozoan called Trichonympha to help in the digestion process. [12] Trichonympha is an endosymbiont that lives inside termites and also acts as a host to bacterial symbionts. The bacteria inside Trichonympha in termites produces cellulase. Cellulase enzymes ...
Humans are home to 10 13 to 10 14 bacteria, roughly equivalent to the number of human cells, [2] and while these bacteria can be pathogenic to their host most of them are mutually beneficial to both the host and bacteria. The human immune system consists of two main types of immunity: innate and adaptive.
A holobiont typically includes a eukaryote host and all of the symbiotic viruses, bacteria, fungi, etc. that live on or inside it. [ 9 ] Holobionts are distinct from superorganisms ; superorganisms consist of many individuals, sometimes of the same species, and the term is commonly applied to eusocial insects.
Endogenosymbiosis is an evolutionary process, proposed by the evolutionary and environmental biologist Roberto Cazzolla Gatti, in which "gene carriers" (viruses, retroviruses and bacteriophages) and symbiotic prokaryotic cells (bacteria or archaea) could share parts or all of their genomes in an endogenous symbiotic relationship with their hosts.
They evolved from symbiotic bacteria and retain a remnant genome. [59] Like bacteria, plant cells have cell walls, and contain organelles such as chloroplasts in addition to the organelles in other eukaryotes. Chloroplasts produce energy from light by photosynthesis, and were also originally symbiotic bacteria. [59]
A symbiosome is formed as a result of a complex and coordinated interaction between the symbiont host and the endosymbiont. [5] At the point of entry into a symbiont host cell, part of the cell's membrane envelops the endosymbiont and breaks off into the cytoplasm as a discrete unit, an organelle-like vacuole called the symbiosome.
The microbiome and host emerged during evolution as a synergistic unit from epigenetics and genetic characteristics, sometimes collectively referred to as a holobiont. [7] [8] The presence of microbiota in human and other metazoan guts has been critical for understanding the co-evolution between metazoans and bacteria.
Bacteria benefit from the reduced exposure to predators and competition from other bacterial species, the ample supply of nutrients and relative environmental stability inside the host. Primary endosymbionts of insects have among the smallest of known bacterial genomes and have lost many genes commonly found in closely related bacteria.