A network analysis of methane and feed conversion genes in the rumen microbial community

Metagenomics involves the genetic analysis of microbial DNA extracted from communities in an environment sample. Advent and falling costs of next-generation sequencing technologies has accelerated metagenomics research providing an improved understanding of microbial communities. In this study we investigate if the traits methane production and feed conversion rates in the rumen microbial community overlap with top genes ranked by topological metrics in a co-abundance network. A co-abundance network was constructed from abundance values of 1570 microbial genes in rumen samples of 8 cattle identified in a metagenomics study at the Beef and Sheep Research Centre of Scotland's Rural College. We used 4 different topological measures: Degree Centrality, Betweenness Centrality, Bonacich Power Centrality and PageRank to the network. Using permutation testing, we discovered, methane production trait genes significantly overlapped with top ranked genes obtained using the metrics PageRank and Bonacich Power Centrality. Feed conversion trait genes overlapped with top ranked genes using Bonacich Power Centrality and Betweenness. Furthermore, we observed the top ranked genes from PageRank and Bonacich Power Centrality significantly overlapped with genes involved in the KEGG methane metabolism pathway and ranked highly key methanogenesis genes such as mcrA and fmdB. Identified functional clusters containing most methane and feed conversion genes were also analyzed in terms of overlap with top ranked genes from topological metrics.

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