Characterization of gut bacteria of italian honey bee Apis mellifera (Apidae: hymenoptera)

Even though enough work has been carried out in other parts of the world on microbial communities associated with the gut of A. mellifera, there is minimal information on the gut microbiota of Apis mellifera with respect to Indian populations. And also, there is no compressive work combining both culture dependent and independent approach on Indian populations. So, we have done this study on isolation and characterization of gut bacteria from different regions of the gut of forager and hive bee of A. mellifera through culture dependent approaches by microbial isolation coupled with generic characterization of using 16S ribosomal RNA probes and culture independent approaches like phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) analysis and next generation sequencing (metagenomics). In addition, biochemical studies were carried out to screen the cellulolytic, hemicellulolytic, lipolytic, pectinolytic and invertase activities of gut bacterial isolates in order to understand the role of the gut bacterial isolates in digestion and nutrition.