A mechanistic overview of ruminal fibre digestion.

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1 Faculty of Chemistry, Biotechnology and Food Science, Norwegian Univeristy of Life Sciences, Aas, Norway
2 Faculty of Biosciences, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Aas, Norway
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.27831v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Agricultural Science, Biotechnology, Microbiology
Keywords
Carbohydrate active enzymes, Type 9 secretion system, CAZymes, Outer membrane vesicles, Cellulosomes, Polysaccharide utilization loci, Multi-modular CAZymes
Copyright
© 2019 Naas et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Naas AE, Pope PB. 2019. A mechanistic overview of ruminal fibre digestion. PeerJ Preprints 7:e27831v1

Abstract

Ruminants have co-evolved with symbiotic rumen microbiota, which readily convert ingested plant fibres into the nutrients they need to sustain their growth and maintenance. Fibre degradation within the rumen microbiome has been attributed to a limited number of cultivable representatives, which has restricted our ability to understand the different enzymatic machineries that exist. However, via a combination of culturing, meta-omics, bioinformatics, biochemistry and enzymology, we are beginning to expand our insight into the different fibre-digesting strategies that rumen microbiota employ. We discuss findings from studies on well-known Ruminococcus, Fibrobacter and Prevotella isolates, as well as those from poorly understood and as-yet uncultured Bacteroidetes lineages. Collectively, these approaches have revealed new mechanistic information related to the hydrolytic capacity of cellulosomes, free enzymes, outer membrane vesicles, polysaccharide utilization loci and large multi-modular enzymes, which are generating deeper insights into the intricate microbial networks that engage in ruminal fibre digestion.

Author Comment

Submitted as a chapter to a peer-reviewed book.