Uncovering the characteristics of the rumen virome for Japanese Cattle

The rumen microbiome is a highly complex ecosystem, including bacteria, archaea, protozoa, fungi, and viruses. Viruses have a large potential to modify the rumen digestion of feeds via infecting and cell lysis of procaryotes in the rumen; however, understanding of the rumen virome is substantially less advanced because of the limitation of the reference genome database. Here, we sequenced virus-like particles (VLPs) in the rumen of 22 Japanese cattle to construct the reference viral genome catalog of the rumen and to uncover the characteristics of the rumen virome.