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News release from DOE JGI, 17 June 2014 excerpt
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&#160;&quot;...not all ruminants are equal when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. It turns out that the amount of methane produced varies substantially across individual animals of the same ruminant species. To find out why this is so, a team of researchers led by the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) deployed high throughput DNA sequencing and specialized analysis techniques to explore the contents of the rumens of sheep in collaboration with NZ&#39;s AgResearch Limited to see what role ruminant &quot;microbiomes&quot; (the microbes living in the rumen) play in this process. 
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The study was published online June 6, 2014 in <a href="http://genome.cshlp.org/content/early/2014/06/06/gr.168245.113.abstract" target="_blank" title="http://genome.cshlp.org/content/early/2014/06/06/g... - link will open in a new window">Genome Research</a>.&quot; 
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<strong>Factsheet</strong>
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	<li>The NZ Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre and the NZ Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium made the methane screening data and animal resources available. </li>
	<li>The NZ Fund for Global Partnerships in Livestock Emissions Research funded the work done in NZ to support the objectives of the Livestock Research Group of the <a href="http://globalresearchalliance.org" target="_blank" title="http://globalresearchalliance.org ... - link will open in a new window">Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases</a></li>
	<li>The DOE Office of Science supported the sheep rumen research at the DOE JGI. </li>
	<li>The data from the study complement the genomic sequences being generated from the <a href="http://hungate1000.org.nz" target="_blank" title="http://hungate1000.org.nz ... - link will open in a new window">Hungate1000 project</a>, which seeks to produce a reference set of rumen microbial genomes from cultivated rumen bacteria and archaea, together with representative cultures of rumen anaerobic fungi and ciliate protozoa.</li>
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<strong>Full news release</strong>
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<a href="http://jgi.doe.gov/study-reveals-livestock-gut-microbes-contributing-greenhouse-gas-emissions/">http://jgi.doe.gov/study-reveals-livestock-gut-microbes-contributing-greenhouse-gas-emissions/</a> &#160;
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