Year: 2014
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Ruminants depend on a complex microbiome in their rumen in order to use plant material as their main energy source.The ruminants themselves do not produce enzymes capable of degrading plant fibre, which typically makes up 55-70% of a pasture forage diet.The microbiota that resides within the rumen is responsible for the fermentation of plant material, the end products of which provide nutrition for the ruminant.Bacteria that attach to ingested plant material are particularly important for initiating the degradation of plant cell walls, but culture-independent studies clearly show that the cultured isolates currently available do not adequately represent the diversity of bacteria present.Bacteria cultured from the rumen is estimated to represent only 10% of the diversity.The reduction in sequencing costs with next generation sequence has led to investigators increasingly using 'omics' approaches to investigate rumen communities.However, information from such studies are hampered by the lack of reference organisms spanning the diversity of rumen bacteria, again highlighting the need for more cultured representative rumen bacteria. In this study, we used liquid media that mimic the physico-chemical composition of the rumen in combination with dilution to single cells to obtain >1000 cultures of anaerobic bacteria from the plant-adherent fraction of bovine rumen contents.
Institutions: Massey University, AgResearch
Language: English
Subfield: Animal Science and Zoology
Domain: Life Sciences
SDG: Zero hunger
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7134995286