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News: Mysteries of the moo-crobiome: Could tweaking cow gut bugs improve beef?

Image: Pete, The Cows…, Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
Image: Pete, The Cows…, Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

Researchers from the University of Edinburgh have sequenced the genomes of 913 types of microbes found inside cows’ digestive systems, hoping to discover more about the types of enzymes that the microbes use to break down the food.

Eventually, scientists might be able to use this knowledge to improve digestion or reduce methane emissions, for example by transferring microbes from one animal to another. Further work is needed to understand the interactions between different microbes.

Read the full story here. See also the Foodsource resource How far could changes in production practices reduce GHG emissions?

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