Tag: nutrition in other organisms

Ruminant animals such as cattle, buffalo, sheep, goat and camel have a compound stomach, which consists of four chamber, viz, rumen, reticulum, omasum and abomasum. Rumen is the first and the largest of the four chambers. Rumen and reticulum harbour numerous bacteria and protozoa, which carry out extensive fermentation of cellulose. So, these two chambers function as sites for cellulose digestion in ruminants. The gastric juice containing enzymes and HCl is secreted only by the fourth chamber i.e., Abomasum.

Cellulose is broken down to short chain fatty acids in ruminants ,during cellulose fermentation by anaerobic bacteria.

Ruminants include cattle, sheep, goats, buffalo. These animals all have a digestive system that is uniquely different from our own. Instead of one compartment to the stomach, they have four. Of the four compartments, the rumen is the largest section and the main digestive center

Vertebrates lack the ability to hydrolyse the beta glycosidic bond of plant cellulose due to the lack of the enzyme cellulase. Thus, ruminants must completely depend on the microbial flora, present in the rumen or hindgut, to digest cellulose. Digestion of food in the rumen is primarily carried out by the rumen microflora. Since, the environment inside a rumen is anaerobic, most of these microbial species are obligate or facultative anaerobes that can decompose complex plant material, such as cellulose, hemicellulose, starch, and proteins. As bacteria conduct fermentation in the rumen, they consume approximately 10% of the carbon, 60% of the phosphorus, and 80% of the nitrogen that the ruminant ingests. To reclaim these nutrients, the ruminant then digests the bacteria in the abomasum. The enzyme lysozyme has adapted to facilitate digestion of bacteria in the ruminant abomasum. Pancreatic ribonuclease also degrades bacterial RNA in the ruminant small intestine as a source of nitrogen.