Innovation Anthology #194:
Muskox and moose thrive in harsh environments.
That’s because microbes in their guts are very efficient at metabolizing the minerals and other nutrients from food they scrape off rocks or chew off bark.
Dr. David Bailey is the President and CEO of Genome Alberta. He believes sequencing the genomes of these stomach microbes will one day improve cattle production.
DR. DAVID BAILEY: Cattle are ruminants and their digestive system is composed of millions of microbes that exist there in different populations. How can they be more efficient with material that they are grazing or consuming? If you look at a muskox or a moose which exist on what we think are low nutrient minerals and fibre yet they seem to do well when they have access to that, then maybe we should know what those bacterial populations are. And maybe it would be helpful to put them into cattle populations so that they could be more efficient at eating and grazing and converting nutrients from one type of biomass into protein and muscle for our own livestock production.
Using genomics to unlock nature’s secrets is the foundation of what Dr. David Bailey calls “the new green technology.”
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I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
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Program Date: 2008-12-18