title: 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. Collectively, these results demonstrate a widely expected pattern that, to our knowledge, has not been explicitly demonstrated in microbial communities: namely that there can exist different community metabolic networks that have the same metabolic inputs and outputs but differ in their internal structure.
authors.affiliation: Division of Animal Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA.
authors.forename: Tasia M
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: Taxis
authors.affiliation: Division of Animal Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA.
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wolff
authors.affiliation: Division of Animal Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA.
authors.forename: Sarah J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Gregg
authors.affiliation: Division of Animal Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA.
authors.forename: Nicholas O
authors.initials: NO
authors.lastname: Minton
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA.
authors.forename: Chiqian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA.
authors.forename: Jingjing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Dai
authors.affiliation: Division of Animal Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA Informatics Institute, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA.
authors.forename: Robert D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Schnabel
authors.affiliation: Division of Animal Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA.
authors.forename: Jeremy F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Taylor
authors.affiliation: Division of Animal Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA.
authors.forename: Monty S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Kerley
authors.affiliation: Informatics Institute, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA Division of Biological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA.
authors.forename: J Chris
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Pires
authors.affiliation: Division of Animal Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA.
authors.forename: William R
authors.initials: WR
authors.lastname: Lamberson
authors.affiliation: Division of Animal Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA Informatics Institute, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA conantg@missouri.edu.
authors.forename: Gavin C
authors.initials: GC
authors.lastname: Conant
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002417:Cattle; D004275:DNA, Ribosomal / Q000737:chemistry; D004798:Enzymes / Q000235:genetics; D005232:Fatty Acids, Volatile / Q000378:metabolism; D008297:Male; D053858:Metabolic Networks and Pathways; D054892:Metagenome; D056186:Metagenomics; D064307:Microbiota / Q000235:genetics; D010802:Phylogeny; D012336:RNA, Ribosomal, 16S / Q000235:genetics; D012417:Rumen / Q000378:metabolism / Q000382:microbiology*
chemical_list: D004275:DNA, Ribosomal; D004798:Enzymes; D005232:Fatty Acids, Volatile; D012336:RNA, Ribosomal, 16S