Ruminants have shared a long history with humans as they can efficiently utilize fibrous plant materials, and economically produce nutritionally valuable high-protein foods, such as meat and milk. Ruminant gastrointestinal tract (GIT) microbiomes play major roles in their host health and production, but its full diversity remains uncharacterized. To considerably improve the comprehensiveness of the ruminant GIT microbiome, we collected 370 content samples from 10 GIT regions, including the stomach (rumen, reticulum, omasum and abomasum; n = 148), small intestine (duodenum, jejunum and ileum; n = 111), and large intestine (cecum, colon and rectum; n = 111) of seven ruminant species (dairy cattle, water buffalo, yak, goat, sheep, roe deer and water deer). Our study expands the characterization of the ruminant GIT microbiota at unprecedented spatial resolution, and offers clues for improving ruminant production in future.
This project was cooperated by the Nanjing Agricultural University, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. We are interested in what large datasets tell us about biological function, and focused on the correlated patterns in big data with phenotypes of interest in ruminant evolution, health and productivity. This website is used to publish and store open data in our work, as well as any other data about the GIT microbiome of ruminants.