Wednesday Nite @ the Lab

Keslea Jewell – Contemplating Ruminant Microbiology.  It is reasonable for most people to assume that the milk they pour on their cereal comes from cows. But all cows do is take bacterial products and string them together to create milk components; without a thriving internal bacterial community a cow would be unable to synthesize milk! We hypothesized that since bacterial products are required for milk production, the types of bacteria present would have a direct and measurable impact on milk production. My own research is focused on understanding the impact of bacterial communities upon milk production in Holstein dairy cows, taking into account such factors as efficiency, milk quality, and community structure. I have used a combination of traditional dairy science (feed analysis, ruminal chemical composition, and milk composition), next-generation sequencing (454 pyrosequencing of the 16S rRNA gene), and bioinformatics (community structure investigation) to determine relationships between the host cow and her ruminal bacteria. What I have found is that there is a correlation between efficiency and ruminal community, suggesting that dairy production could be improved by altering the ruminal communities to match "high efficiency" profiles. Live videostream at biotech.wisc.edu/webcams. There is a $1 per hour parking fee.