Metatranscriptome analysis to identify the influence of diet over metabolic proficiency of rumen in Mehsani buffalo

The rumen microbiome is a complex system of numerous microbes that play crucial role in digesting feed and are of particular interest for the extraction of enzymes for application in industries such as food, biofuel, and others. Metatranscriptome profiling gives insight into the genes being actively transcribed, providing a functional understanding of the rumen. Current study focuses over the analysis of rumen metatranscriptome samples from Mehsani buffalo, belonging to different diet treatments including dry and green roughage with varying amount of concentrate. The study aimed to determine the key biological processes in the rumen and how diet changes affect them. Results showed that the most prevalent microbial community was Prevotella and metabolic activities dominated, with carbohydrate metabolism, fermentation, and methanogenesis among the most abundant functional features. It was identified that functional profile of the rumen samples are majorly influenced by diet. The green roughage diet groups reflect high metabolic activity and contain genes for carbohydrate metabolism, which were not present in the dry roughage diet groups. Attempts were also taken to identify variation in fermentation and methanogenesis processes among these diet variations. Further, the study found that the type of diet greatly impacted the functional profile and have significant influence on metabolic capacity of animals. A set of 64 pathways were identified as significant ones in corresponds to diet variations and out of which 20 belongs to metabolic processes and this was further supported by differential abundance analysis, LEfSe and Random Forest analysis also, highlighting the importance of metabolism in rumen functionality. Metabolic pathways were more abundant in green roughage diets groups compared to dry roughage ones, indicating that green roughage stimulates more metabolic activity compared to dry roughage. Impact of concentrate in the diet was also visible. The study found that the type of diet, specifically the choice of roughage, significantly impacts the functionality of the rumen and affects its metabolic activity.