Evolution of Biomass-Degrading Anaerobic Consortia Revealed by Metagenomics. feces metagenome

Aiming to inform future designs of microbial consortia for lignocellulosic biomass conversion, we performed a series of large-scale enrichment experiments from the goat fecal microbiome. While nearly all previous studies focus on enrichment of lignocellulolytic bacteria sourced from herbivores, we specifically selected for consortia likely to retain anaerobic gut fungi from the sub-phylum Neocallimastigomycota due to their importance as a primary biomass-degrading member of the herbivorous gut microbiome. By comparing the development and performance of microbial communities under an array of cultivation conditions, we identified consortia featuring cross-domain partnership between anaerobic fungi and methanogenic archaea that broke down twice as much cellulose paper than consortia dominated by bacteria.