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Functional dynamics of the microbiome

Reference	BBS/E/W/10964A01B
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Alison Kingston-Smith
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors	Dr Gordon Allison, Professor Charles Newbold, Dr Justin Pachebat, Professor Nigel Scollan
Institution	Aberystwyth University
Department	IBERS
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	1,438,047
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/04/2012
End date	31/03/2017
Duration	59 months

Abstract

The aim of this sub-programme is to identify the microbial functionalities associated with efficient fermentation of fresh forage and how they can be promoted. The use of non-culture based technologies has revealed the complexity and diversity of the rumen microbial ecosystem. These approaches have shown that microbial profile can vary over remarkably short time periods as a result of different forage diets and as a result of duration of colonisation events. A change in diversity may not necessarily result in an altered functional phenotype, so sequence-based results (metagenomics and RNA-seq) will be mapped to metabolic pathways (e.g.., KEGG, GO) to characterise the microbial functionality associated with succensional microbial colonisation and degradation of fresh forages representing desirable and poor fermentation outcomes. Proteomics (2-D gel electrophoresis, differential fluorescent labelling, orbitrap-MS) will be used to confirm the effect of gene expression change on protein/enzyme abundance. Visible (fluorescence microscopy) and spectral imaging (FTIR, Raman spectroscopy) techniques will be used to determine chemio-spatial aspects of attachment and colonisation pertaining to both the plant and microbial components.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Not funded via Committee
Research Topics	Microbiology
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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