Novel Complete Methanogenic Pathways in Longitudinal Genomic Study of Monogastric Age-Associated Archaea

Our study is the first description of longitudinal monogastric methanogens with genomic analysis of methanogenic function. We evaluated methanogen abundance and functions of 7 monogastric swine hosts over their lifetime at 22 timepoints from birth through adulthood (ages 1-177 days). We described how our methanogen metagenome assembled genomes (MAGs) were identified during specific host ages. Furthermore, we determined methanogenic pathways previously unknown to monogastric-associated methanogens. This study provided evidence of multiple novel methanogen characteristics, which will aid future studies as we build the monogastric methanogen repertoire.