Elie Jami

Publications (2)13.77 Total impact

• Source

  Available from: Itzhak Mizrahi

  Article: Insights into the bovine rumen plasmidome.

  Aya Brown Kav, Goor Sasson, Elie Jami, Adi Doron-Faigenboim, Itai Benhar, Itzhak Mizrahi
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  ABSTRACT: Plasmids are self-replicating genetic elements capable of mobilization between different hosts. Plasmids often serve as mediators of lateral gene transfer, a process considered to be a strong and sculpting evolutionary force in microbial environments. Our aim was to characterize the overall plasmid population in the environment of the bovine rumen, which houses a complex and dense microbiota that holds enormous significance for humans. We developed a procedure for the isolation of total rumen plasmid DNA, termed rumen plasmidome, and subjected it to deep sequencing using the Illumina paired-end protocol and analysis using public and custom-made bioinformatics tools. A large number of plasmidome contigs aligned with plasmids of rumen bacteria isolated from different locations and at various time points, suggesting that not only the bacterial taxa, but also their plasmids, are defined by the ecological niche. The bacterial phylum distribution of the plasmidome was different from that of the rumen bacterial taxa. Nevertheless, both shared a dominance of the phyla Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, and Proteobacteria. Evidently, the rumen plasmidome is of a highly mosaic nature that can cross phyla. Interestingly, when we compared the functional profile of the rumen plasmidome to two plasmid databases and two recently published rumen metagenomes, it became apparent that the rumen plasmidome codes for functions, which are enriched in the rumen ecological niche and could confer advantages to their hosts, suggesting that the functional profiles of mobile genetic elements are associated with their environment, as has been previously implied for viruses.
  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 03/2012; 109(14):5452-7. · 9.68 Impact Factor
• Source

  Available from: Itzhak Mizrahi

  Article: Composition and similarity of bovine rumen microbiota across individual animals.

  Elie Jami, Itzhak Mizrahi
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  ABSTRACT: The bovine rumen houses a complex microbiota which is responsible for cattle's remarkable ability to convert indigestible plant mass into food products. Despite this ecosystem's enormous significance for humans, the composition and similarity of bacterial communities across different animals and the possible presence of some bacterial taxa in all animals' rumens have yet to be determined. We characterized the rumen bacterial populations of 16 individual lactating cows using tag amplicon pyrosequencing. Our data showed 51% similarity in bacterial taxa across samples when abundance and occurrence were analyzed using the Bray-Curtis metric. By adding taxon phylogeny to the analysis using a weighted UniFrac metric, the similarity increased to 82%. We also counted 32 genera that are shared by all samples, exhibiting high variability in abundance across samples. Taken together, our results suggest a core microbiome in the bovine rumen. Furthermore, although the bacterial taxa may vary considerably between cow rumens, they appear to be phylogenetically related. This suggests that the functional requirement imposed by the rumen ecological niche selects taxa that potentially share similar genetic features.
  PLoS ONE 01/2012; 7(3):e33306. · 4.09 Impact Factor