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Updated: Jan 21, 2026

Biology of Microbial Communities - Interview
Published on: May 28, 2007
Assignment of virus and antimicrobial resistance genes to microbial hosts in a complex microbial community by
Derek M Bickhart1, Mick Watson2, Sergey Koren3
1Cell Wall Biology and Utilization Laboratory, Dairy Forage Research Center, USDA, Madison, WI, 53706, USA.
Abstract:
We describe a method that adds long-read sequencing to a mix of technologies used to assemble a highly complex cattle rumen microbial community, and provide a comparison to short read-based methods. Long-read alignments and Hi-C linkage between contigs support the identification of 188 novel virus-host associations and the determination of phage life cycle states in the rumen microbial community. The long-read assembly also identifies 94 antimicrobial resistance genes, compared to only seven alleles in the short-read assembly. We demonstrate novel techniques that work synergistically to improve characterization of biological features in a highly complex rumen microbial community.
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