Comparative Microbiome Analysis Reveals the Ecological Relationships Between Rumen Methanogens, Acetogens, and Their Hosts

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

Documents

  • Zhipeng Li
  • Xiaoxu Wang
  • Alberdi Estibaritz, Antton
  • Jiabo Deng
  • Zhenyu Zhong
  • Huazhe Si
  • Chengli Zheng
  • Hanlin Zhou
  • Jianming Wang
  • Yifeng Yang
  • André Denis G. Wright
  • Shengyong Mao
  • Zhigang Zhang
  • Leluo Guan
  • Guangyu Li

Ruminant methane, which is generated by methanogens through the consumption of hydrogen and supports the normal function of the rumen ecosystem, is a major source of greenhouse gases. Reductive acetogenesis by acetogens is a possible alternative sink that can dispose of hydrogen for acetate production. However, the distribution of rumen methanogens and acetogens along with the relationships among methanogens, acetogens, and their host are poorly understood. Therefore, we investigated the rumen methanogen and acetogen communities of 97 individual animals representing 14 ruminant species within three ruminant families Cervidae (deer), Bovidae (bovid), and Moschidae (musk deer). The results showed that the Methanobrevibacter spp. and acetogens associated with Eubacteriaceae were the most widespread methanogens and acetogens, respectively. However, other methanogens and acetogens exhibited host specificity in the rumen of reindeer and Chinese muntjac deer. Acetogen and methanogen communities were not correlated in these species, and the phylosymbiosis signature between host phylogeny and the composition of both communities was lacking. The abundance of Methanobrevibacter gottschalkii was negatively correlated with the degree of papillation of the rumen wall. Finally, co-occurrence analysis showed that the variation of the predicted methane yields was characterized by the interactive patterns between methanogens, acetogens, and concentrations of rumen metabolites. Our results show that rumen methanogen and acetogen communities have low compositional interdependence and do not exhibit parallel host evolution, which suggests that the strategies for mitigating methane production should be based on a species-specific rumen microbiota analysis.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1311
JournalFrontiers in Microbiology
Volume11
Number of pages14
ISSN1664-302X
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020

    Research areas

  • host–microbiome interaction, methane, phylosymbiosis, reindeer, rumen epithelium, ruminants

Number of downloads are based on statistics from Google Scholar and www.ku.dk


No data available

ID: 259669600