Cultivation and sequencing of microbiota members unveil the functional potential of yak gut microbiota

Abstract

As a representative species in high-altitude extreme environments, yaks rely on their gut microbiota to support critical physiological functions and adapt to harsh conditions. This study established a comprehensive pipeline by integrating innovative single-bacterium culture conditions with optimized strategies for the yak gut microbiota. The resulting genomic repository not only expands the culturable microbial resources for extremophile mammals but also reveals unique metabolic traits, including polysaccharide-digesting CAZyme clusters, novel BGCs, and phage-host interactions. This approach provides essential microbial resources for advancing our understanding of host-microbial adaptations to extreme environments and offers tangible tools for industrial enzyme discovery and synthetic biology applications.