Bacterial community and diversity in the rumen of 11 Mongolian cattle as revealed by 16S rDNA amplicon sequencing

Through microorganisms in the rumen of ruminant, plant fiber can be converted to edible food such as meat and milk. This function is dependent on the microbe in the rumen. Ruminant have a rich and complex microbial community within the rumen, and the bacteria comprise the dominant proportion of the ruminal microbes. High-throughput sequencing offers a viable solution for the study of rumen microbes. In this study, rumen fluid samples were taken from 11 cattle from Inner Mongolian, the DNA of 11 rumen fluid samples were extracted and the V4 regions of 16Sr DNA amplicon sequenced. More than 90,000 raw reads and 60,000 effect Tags per sample were obtained. We observed 28,122 overall operational taxonomic units (2,557 ± 361 per sample), Bacteroidetes (44.41 ± 7.31%), Firmicutes (29.07 ± 3.78%), and Proteobacteria (7.18 ± 5.63%) were the dominant phyla in rumen bacteria, accounting for 82%. At the genus level, the highest relative abundance is Prevotella. We further predicted their functions using the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG). The result showed that they include metabolism, genetic information processing, environmental information processing and cellular processes. It explored the bacterial community diversity and composition of the rumen of Mongolian cattle. On the whole, our research showed that there was a high diversity of rumen bacteria in Mongolian cattle. Meanwhile, these findings provided information for further studies on the relationship between the community, diversity, functions of rumen bacteria and the nutritional physiological functions of the host.