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Cow rumen metagenome study in EarthSky

Enter: the cow. If cows are good at anything, it’s digesting plant material until it turns into sugar; Dr. Rubin noted that cows have been eating grass for a few million years. That’s why Rubin’s team decided to do major genetic analysis of microbes inside the stomachs of cows. He explained that he was interested… [Read More]

Cow rumen metagenome study on BBC World Service: Science in Action

Growing crops to make bio-fuel is controversial – they can take up valuable land and resources that could be used for food production and in the case of oil palms, large tracts of rainforest have been cleared to make way for this cash crop. But the second generation of bio-fuels hope to make use of… [Read More]

Cow rumen metagenome study on COSMOS Magazine

The result was 270 billion base pairs of genetic code, almost a hundred times more than the human genome, and an estimated two million potential genes to be investigated. To find which bacteria could digest cellulose, the researchers compared codes with known regions of Carbohydrate Active Enzymes called CAZymes. “Regions include domains that bind cellulose… [Read More]

Cow rumen metagenome study in R&D Magazine

In the new study, the researchers focused on switchgrass, a promising biofuels crop. After incubating the switchgrass in the rumen for 72 hours, researchers conducted a genomic analysis of all of the microbes that adhered to switchgrass. This “metagenomic” approach, led by Edward Rubin, of the DOE Joint Genome Institute and the Lawrence Berkeley National… [Read More]

Cow rumen metagenome study on Mother Nature Network

Ethanol makers will produce about 13 billion gallons of the renewable fuel this year, chiefly from corn. A 2007 law requires annual use of 36 billion gallons from 2022 and reserves 21 billion gallons of it for “advanced” biofuels.   The U.S. government offered $1.5 billion in October to help bring next-generation biofuels to market…. [Read More]

Cow rumen metagenome study on Scicasts

“The problem with second-generation biofuels is the problem of unlocking the soluble fermentable sugars that are in the plant cell wall,” said University of Illinois animal sciences professor Roderick Mackie, an author on the study whose research into the microbial life of the bovine rumen set the stage for the new approach. “The cow’s been… [Read More]

Cow rumen metagenome study on GenomeWeb’s The Daily Scan

In Science this week, a team led by investigators at the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute reports its discovery of 27,755 putative carbohydrate-active genes among cow rumen microbes through metagenomic sequencing. The team also found that these genes “expressed 90 candidate proteins, of which 57 percent were enzymatically active against cellulosic substrates,” which… [Read More]

Cow rumen metagenome study on ABC Science

In this case, the goal was to find microbes that make enzymes that can efficiently break down the toughest fibres in switchgrass, a tough crop that can be used to produce ethanol and which can grow in places where food crops do not grow well. But switchgrass is very tough to break down. Read more… [Read More]

Cow rumen metagenome study on Times Live

They used new genetic sequencing techniques to find microbes that make enzymes that in turn can break down tough grasses into usable products. Writing in the journal Science on Thursday, they said they took samples directly from the rumen — the organ in cattle that ferments and breaks down grass. Read more on Times Live… [Read More]

Cow rumen metagenome study in Technology Review

The first step in cellulosic biofuels is converting tough plant materials made of cellulose and lignin into sugars that can then be fermented to make fuels. But this is expensive and currently requires a large quantity of enzymes to break down cellulose. “We’re talking truckloads,” says Frances Arnold, a professor of chemical engineering at Caltech… [Read More]