The players may change but the game remains: network analyses of ruminal microbiomes suggest taxonomic differences mask functional similarity.

ABSTRACT: By mapping translated metagenomic reads to a microbial metabolic network, we show that ruminal ecosystems that are rather dissimilar in their taxonomy can be considerably more similar at the metabolic network level. Using a new network bi-partition approach for linking the microbial network to a bovine metabolic network, we observe that these ruminal metabolic networks exhibit properties consistent with distinct metabolic communities producing similar outputs from common inputs. For instance, the closer in network space that a microbial reaction is to a reaction found in the host, the lower will be the variability of its enzyme copy number across hosts. Similarly, these microbial enzymes that are nearby to host nodes are also higher in copy number than are more distant enzymes. Collectivel

SUBMITTER: Taxis TM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4787786 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature