Cellulosilyticum ruminicola,a Newly Described Rumen Bacterium That Possesses Redundant Fibrolytic-Protein-Encoding Genes and Degrades Lignocellulose with Multiple Carbohydrate- Borne Fibrolytic Enzymes

Cellulosilyticum ruminicola H1 is a newly described bacterium isolated from yak (Bos grunniens) rumen and is characterized by its ability to grow on a variety of hemicelluloses and degrade cellulosic materials. In this study, we performed the whole-genome sequencing of C. ruminicola H1 and observed a comprehensive set of genes encoding the enzymes essential for hydrolyzing plant cell wall. The corresponding enzymatic activities were also determined in strain H1; these included endoglucanases, cellobiohydrolases, xylanases, mannanase, pectinases, and feruloyl esterases and acetyl esterases to break the interbridge cross-link, as well as the enzymes that degrade the glycosidic bonds. This bacterium appears to produce polymer hydrolases that act on both soluble and crystal celluloses. Approximately half of the cellulytic activities, including cellobiohydrolase (50%), feruloyl esterase (45%), and one third of xylanase (31%) and endoglucanase (36%) activities were bound to cellulosic fibers. However, only a minority of mannase (6.78%) and pectinase (1.76%) activities were fiber associated. Strain H1 seems to degrade the plant-derived polysaccharides by producing individual fibrolytic enzymes, whereas the majority of polysaccharide hydrolases contain carbohydrate-binding module. Cellulosome or cellulosomelike protein complex was never isolated from this bacterium. Thus, the fibrolytic enzyme production of strain H1 may represent a different strategy in cellulase organization used by most of other ruminal microbes, but it applies the fungal mode of cellulose production.The ruminant rumens are long believed to be the anaerobic environments efficiently degrading the plant-derived polysaccharides, which is attributed to the inhabited abundant rumen microorganisms. They implement the fibrolytic degradation by the combination of the enzymes comprising of cellulases, hemicellulases, and to a lesser extent pectinases and ligninases (12). The rumen bacteria are outnumbered of the other rumen microbes; however, only a few of cellulolytic bacteria have been isolated from rumens. Ruminococcus flavefaciens, Ruminococcus albus, and Fibrobacter succinogenes are considered to be the most important cellulose-degrading bacteria in the rumen (18), and they produce a set of cellulolytic enzymes, including endoglucanases, exoglucanases (generally cellobiohydrolase), and β-glucosidases, as well as hemicellulases. In addition, the predominant ruminal hemicellulose-digesting bacteria such as Butyrivibrio fibrisolvens and Prevotella ruminicola lack the ability to digest cellulose but degrade xylan and pectin and utilize the degraded soluble sugars as substrates (10, 14). Although the robust cellulolytic species F. succinogenes degrades xylan, it cannot use the pentose product as a carbon source (24). Culture-independent approaches indicate that the three cellulolytic bacterial species represent only ∼2% of the ruminal bacterial 16S rRNA (43). Therefore, many varieties of rumen microbes remain uncultured (2). In recent years, rumen metagenomics studies have revealed the vast diversity of fibrolytic enzymes, multiple domain proteins, and the complexity of microbial composition in the ecosystem (9, 17). Hence, it is likely that the entire microbial community is necessary for the implementation of an efficient fibrolytic process in the rumen, including the uncultured species.In the rumen and other fibrolytic ecosystems, cellulolytic bacteria have to cope with the structural complexity of lignocelluloses and the interspecies competition; thus, not only a variety of plant polymer-degrading enzymes but also a noncatalytic assistant strategy, such as including adhesion of cells to substrates by a variety of anchoring domains, is required (8, 33, 38, 39). The (hemi)cellulolytic enzyme systems have been intensively studied for nonrumen anaerobic bacteria, including Clostridium thermocellum (19, 40), Clostridium cellulolyticum (6), Clostridium cellulovorans (13), and Clostridium stercorarium (47), as well as the rumen species, Rumicoccocus albus (35), Ruminococcus flavefaciens (32), and Fibrobacter succinogenes (4). The results indicate that most of them, except for Fibrobacter succinogenes, produce multiple cellulolytic enzymes integrated in a complex, cellulosome, and free individual proteins.The yak (Bos grunniens) is a large ruminant (∼1,000 kg) in the bovine family that lives mainly on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in China at an altitude of 3,000 m above sea level. It is a local species that lives mainly on the world''s highest plateau. Yaks live in a full-grazing style with grasses, straws, and lichens as their exclusive feed, so the yak rumen can harbor a microbial flora distinct from those of other ruminants due to their fiber-component diet, since diet can be a powerful factor in regulating mammalian gut microbiome (27). A very different prokaryote community structure was revealed for yak rumen in our previous work based on the 16S rRNA diversity, which showed fewer phyla than for cattle but that a higher ratio of sequences was related to uncultured bacteria (2).We previously isolated a novel anaerobic fibrolytic bacterium, Cellulosilyticum ruminicola H1, from the rumen of a domesticated yak (11). Strain H1 grew robustly on natural plant fibers such as corn cob, alfalfa, and ryegrass as the sole carbon and energy sources, as well as on a variety of polysaccharides, including cellulose, xylan, mannan, and pectin, but not monosaccharides such as glucose, which is preferred by most ruminal bacteria. In the present study, using a draft of its genome and enzymatic characterization, we analyzed the enzymatic activities and the structures of the polymer hydrolases of strain H1 that were involved in the hydrolysis of complex polysaccharides.