RuminOmics/RMG network/ECO-FCE workshop

Over 80 scientists from all over the world converged at the Aberdeen Exhibition & Conference Centre in Scotland on June 16th 2014 for a satellite workshop on the theme of How does the gut microbiota influence feed efficiency? Researchers presented on methodologies and data from current and ongoing work from three projects: RuminOmics, Rumen Microbial Genomics Network (RMGN) and ECO-FCE.

This was the second workshop organised by RuminOmics as satellite meetings to major international conferences. Whereas the focus in the first workshop had been technical, this time there was input from two other projects, ECO-FCE, an EU FP7 supported project and the RMGN, describing their results on linking feed efficiency and/or emissions with the gut microbiome. ECO-FCE demonstrated that pigs and poultry respond to the gut microbiota in a way analogous to ruminants, while RMGN described the current status of the Hungate 1000 project and in ‘culturing the not-yet-cultivated’. Great interest was shown by participants when Ilma Tapio of RuminOmics described the cow-reindeer digesta transplant experiments.

Although the number of participants was too high to foster a genuine workshop type of discussion, what emerged was a hybrid workshop/focussed symposium that held the attention of all and promoted all three consortia, both individually and collectively, to an international audience. Closing the workshop Professor John Wallace, the coordinator of RuminOmics, said he found it encouraging to see that large datasets were beginning to be managed successfully to understand the role of the gut microbiota in feed efficiency.

Below was the programme and available presentations.

Programme
10.00 – John Wallace (Aberdeen, UK) – RuminOmics
10.15 – Graeme Attwood (AgResearch, NZ) – Update on Hungate 1000
10.40 – Barbara Metzler (Vienna, Austria) and Stefan Buzoianu (Fermoy, Ireland) – Improving feed efficiency by understanding the intestinal bacterial network in pigs and poultry
11.15 – Coffee
11.30 – Katarzyna Stadnicka (Bydgoszcz, Poland) – Practical and scientific aspects of pre- or synbiotics in ovo injection into chicken embryo
11.55 – Chris Creevey (Aberystwyth, UK) – Rumen systems biology
12.20 – Tim Snelling (Aberdeen, UK) – Rumen metaproteomics
12.45 – Matthias Hess (Washington State University, USA) – Metatranscriptomic and metabolomic techniques for rumen microbes
13.10 – Lunch
14.00 – Ilma Tapio (Jokioinen, Finland) – Digesta-exchange experiments with reindeer and cattle
14.25 – Ignacio Badiola (Barcelona, Spain) – Relationship between microbiota, intestinal morphology and expression of cytokines of the intestinal mucosa of chickens with high or low FCR
14:50 – Eric Pinloche (Aberystwyth, UK) – Culturing the “unculturable”: where are we now?
15:15 – Sharon Huws (Aberystwyth, UK) – Homoserine lactone based bacterial cell-cell communication and its impact on the plant-microbe interactome
15:40 – Discussion