title: Exploring rumen microbe-derived fibre-degrading activities for improving feed digestibility

authors: Moon, Christina D.

subjects: Digestibility

abstract: Ruminal fibre degradation is mediated by a complex community of rumen microbes, and its efficiency is crucial for optimal dairy productivity. Enzymes produced by rumen microbes are primarily responsible for degrading the complex structural polysaccharides that comprise fibre in the plant cell walls of feed materials. Because rumen microbes have evolved with their ruminant hosts over millions of years to perform this task, their enzymes are hypothesised to be optimally suited for activity at the temperature, pH range, and anaerobic environment of the rumen. However, fibre-rich diets are not fully digested, which represents a loss in potential animal productivity. Thus, there is opportunity to improve fibre utilisation through treating feeds with rumen microbe-derived fibrolytic enzymes and associated activities that enhance fibre degradation. This research aims to gain a better understanding of the key rumen microbes involved in fibre degradation and the mechanisms they employ to degrade fibre, by applying cultivation-based and culture-independent genomics approaches to rumen microbial communities of New Zealand dairy cattle. Using this knowledge, we aim to identify new opportunities for improving fibre degradation to enhance dairy productivity.
Rumen content samples were taken over the course of a year from a Waikato dairy production herd. Over 1,000 rumen bacterial cultures were obtained from the plant-adherent fraction of the rumen contents. Among these cultures, two, 59 and 103 potentially new families, genera and species of rumen bacteria were identified, respectively. Many of the novel strains are being genome sequenced within the Hungate 1000 rumen microbial reference genome programme, which is providing deeper insights into the range of mechanisms used by the individual strains for fibre degradation. This information has been used to guide the selection of rumen bacterial strains with considerable potential as fibrolytic enzyme producers in vitro, with the intent of developing the strains so that their enzymes may be used as feed pre-treatments for use on farm. Culture-independent metagenomic approaches were also used to explore the activities involved in fibre degradation from the rumen microbial communities. Functional screening has revealed a range of novel enzymes and a novel fibre disrupting activity. Enrichment for the cell-secreted proteins from the community revealed evidence of a diverse range of cellulosomes, which are cell-surface associated multi-enzyme complexes that efficiently degrade plant cell wall polysaccharides. Biochemical and structural characterisation of these proteins has been conducted.
In conclusion, cultivation and culture-independent genomic approaches have been applied to New Zealand bovine rumen microbial communities, and have provided considerable new insights into ruminal fibre degradation processes. Novel activities and bacterial species that display desirable activities on fibrous substrates in vitro are now being explored for their potential to improve ruminal fibre degradation, to allow the development of new technologies that will enhance dairy productivity.

text: Exploring rumen microbe-derived fibre-degrading activities for improving feed digestibility Ruminal fibre degradation is mediated by a complex community of rumen microbes, and its efficiency is crucial for optimal dairy productivity. Enzymes produced by rumen microbes are primarily responsible for degrading the complex structural polysaccharides that comprise fibre in the plant cell walls of feed materials. Because rumen microbes have evolved with their ruminant hosts over millions of years to perform this task, their enzymes are hypothesised to be optimally suited for activity at the temperature, pH range, and anaerobic environment of the rumen. However, fibre-rich diets are not fully digested, which represents a loss in potential animal productivity. Thus, there is opportunity to improve fibre utilisation through treating feeds with rumen microbe-derived fibrolytic enzymes and associated activities that enhance fibre degradation. This research aims to gain a better understanding of the key rumen microbes involved in fibre degradation and the mechanisms they employ to degrade fibre, by applying cultivation-based and culture-independent genomics approaches to rumen microbial communities of New Zealand dairy cattle. Using this knowledge, we aim to identify new opportunities for improving fibre degradation to enhance dairy productivity.
Rumen content samples were taken over the course of a year from a Waikato dairy production herd. Over 1,000 rumen bacterial cultures were obtained from the plant-adherent fraction of the rumen contents. Among these cultures, two, 59 and 103 potentially new families, genera and species of rumen bacteria were identified, respectively. Many of the novel strains are being genome sequenced within the Hungate 1000 rumen microbial reference genome programme, which is providing deeper insights into the range of mechanisms used by the individual strains for fibre degradation. This information has been used to guide the selection of rumen bacterial strains with considerable potential as fibrolytic enzyme producers in vitro, with the intent of developing the strains so that their enzymes may be used as feed pre-treatments for use on farm. Culture-independent metagenomic approaches were also used to explore the activities involved in fibre degradation from the rumen microbial communities. Functional screening has revealed a range of novel enzymes and a novel fibre disrupting activity. Enrichment for the cell-secreted proteins from the community revealed evidence of a diverse range of cellulosomes, which are cell-surface associated multi-enzyme complexes that efficiently degrade plant cell wall polysaccharides. Biochemical and structural characterisation of these proteins has been conducted.
In conclusion, cultivation and culture-independent genomic approaches have been applied to New Zealand bovine rumen microbial communities, and have provided considerable new insights into ruminal fibre degradation processes. Novel activities and bacterial species that display desirable activities on fibrous substrates in vitro are now being explored for their potential to improve ruminal fibre degradation, to allow the development of new technologies that will enhance dairy productivity.

year: 2014

title: Beyond Romance's Utopia: The Individual and Human Love

authors: Stock, Carolyn

subjects: Romantic love

abstract: This thesis is a critique of romantic love theoretically premised on the analytical psychology of Carl Jung and the humanistic psychoanalysis of Erich Fromm.  The aim of this critique is to explore whether there are grounds for postulating a conception of love beyond the current romantic framework.
As the critique is primarily concentrated at the depth level, romantic love is examined via the medium of Cinderella folklore, with particular focus on Andy Tennant's 1998 film adaptation of Cinderella, Ever After.  Based on a Jungian approach to the psyche and psychic products, the methodological framework incorporates the three following tools: The tool of interpretation at the subjective level, in which the characters of the Cinderella fairy tale are read symbolically rather than taken to denote literal fictitious characters; the tool of constructive analysis, in which it is argued that romantic love is more than 'nothing but' a boy/girl love story or 'nothing but' a myth depicting patriarchal oppression; and the tool of amplification, in which archetypal similarities between the Christian myth and the Cinderella fairy tale are highlighted.
	The central argument of this critique is that while romantic love does not provide a viable model of relatedness if taken and practiced literally, the romantic myth nonetheless contains within it the basis for a fuller and richer experience of love and relatedness if read subjectively.  The rationale for a depth critique of romantic love is based upon the Jungian postulate that phenomena such as dreams and myths issue fundamentally from the unconscious psychic realm, and further upon Jung's recognition of a psychological developmental process he refers to as 'individuation' activated by engagement with the products of the unconscious.  A symbolic/psychological reading of romantic love brings to light that romantic desire toward another is an outward manifestation of an inner desire for individual realisation, and is expressive of the individual's own capacity for wholeness.  The value of a symbolic reading of romantic love is appreciated if it is conceived that it is precisely individual realisation that forms the basis for what is referred to by Erich Fromm as productive or knowledge-based love, argued here to be the ideal and only firm basis for human relatedness generally and intimate relatedness specifically.

text: Beyond Romance's Utopia: The Individual and Human Love This thesis is a critique of romantic love theoretically premised on the analytical psychology of Carl Jung and the humanistic psychoanalysis of Erich Fromm.  The aim of this critique is to explore whether there are grounds for postulating a conception of love beyond the current romantic framework.
As the critique is primarily concentrated at the depth level, romantic love is examined via the medium of Cinderella folklore, with particular focus on Andy Tennant's 1998 film adaptation of Cinderella, Ever After.  Based on a Jungian approach to the psyche and psychic products, the methodological framework incorporates the three following tools: The tool of interpretation at the subjective level, in which the characters of the Cinderella fairy tale are read symbolically rather than taken to denote literal fictitious characters; the tool of constructive analysis, in which it is argued that romantic love is more than 'nothing but' a boy/girl love story or 'nothing but' a myth depicting patriarchal oppression; and the tool of amplification, in which archetypal similarities between the Christian myth and the Cinderella fairy tale are highlighted.
	The central argument of this critique is that while romantic love does not provide a viable model of relatedness if taken and practiced literally, the romantic myth nonetheless contains within it the basis for a fuller and richer experience of love and relatedness if read subjectively.  The rationale for a depth critique of romantic love is based upon the Jungian postulate that phenomena such as dreams and myths issue fundamentally from the unconscious psychic realm, and further upon Jung's recognition of a psychological developmental process he refers to as 'individuation' activated by engagement with the products of the unconscious.  A symbolic/psychological reading of romantic love brings to light that romantic desire toward another is an outward manifestation of an inner desire for individual realisation, and is expressive of the individual's own capacity for wholeness.  The value of a symbolic reading of romantic love is appreciated if it is conceived that it is precisely individual realisation that forms the basis for what is referred to by Erich Fromm as productive or knowledge-based love, argued here to be the ideal and only firm basis for human relatedness generally and intimate relatedness specifically.

year: 2007

title: Ethics in Maori research: Working paper

authors: Cram, Fiona

subjects: Maori

abstract: When we think about what we are doing as researchers, one of our main tasks is to acquire knowledge. For some researchers their task begins and ends there. Knowledge is viewed as cumulative, that by adding to some knowledge pool we will one day be able to put the component parts together and discover universal laws. Many researchers also assume that the knowledge they have collected is objective, value-free and apolitical. This is part of psychologists’ ‘physics envy’. A Maori view of knowledge is very different from this. For Maori the purpose of knowledge is to uphold the interests and the mana of the group; it serves the community. Researchers are not building up their own status; they are fighting for the betterment of their iwi and for Maori people in general.

text: Ethics in Maori research: Working paper When we think about what we are doing as researchers, one of our main tasks is to acquire knowledge. For some researchers their task begins and ends there. Knowledge is viewed as cumulative, that by adding to some knowledge pool we will one day be able to put the component parts together and discover universal laws. Many researchers also assume that the knowledge they have collected is objective, value-free and apolitical. This is part of psychologists’ ‘physics envy’. A Maori view of knowledge is very different from this. For Maori the purpose of knowledge is to uphold the interests and the mana of the group; it serves the community. Researchers are not building up their own status; they are fighting for the betterment of their iwi and for Maori people in general.

year: 1993