DNA extraction and PCR Genomic DNA was extracted from 300 μl aliquots of the eight (4 yak and 4 cattle) thawed rumen samples using the QIAamp® DNA Stool kit (QIAGEN, Germany). The DNA extraction procedure was carried out in triplicate. The methanogen-specific primers, Met86F (5′- GCT CAG TAA CAC GTG G-3′) [27] and Met1340R (5′- CGG TGT GTG CAA GGA G-3′) [27] were used to PCR amplify the 16S rRNA gene using the following thermal cycling conditions: initial denaturation of 5 min at 94°C, 40 cycles of denaturation at 94°C

for 30 s, annealing at 58°C for 1 min, extension at 72°C for 90 s, and a final NVP-BSK805 research buy extension at 72°C for 10 min. Each PCR mixture contained 1 μl (20ug) of genomic DNA, 200 nM of each primer, 10 μM of dNTP (i-DNA Biotechnology Pte Ltd, Singapore), 1x VioTaq® reaction buffer, 0.5 U of VioTaq® Taq DNA polymerase (Viogene, Taiwan) and deionized water,

in a final volume of 20 μl. PCR product of about 1.3 kb was isolated from the agarose gel and purified using MEGAquick-spin™ PCR and an agarose gel DNA extraction Kit (iNtRON Biotechnology, Seongnam, South Korea). Cloning, sequencing, Erismodegib purchase and analyses Using chemical transformation, purified PCR products were cloned into the pCR 2.1® TOPO vector using the PCR 2.1® TOPO TA Cloning Kit (Invitrogen Ltd, USA). Recombinant colonies were picked and plasmid DNA was extracted using DNA-spin™ Plasmid DNA Extraction Kit (iNtRON Biotechnology, Korea). Sequencing was performed with an automated CP 690550 sequencer ABI 3730 xl using Big Dye Chemistry. All sequences were aligned with ClustalW [28] in BioEdit software, and the Basic Local Alignment Search

Tool (BLAST) [29] was used to determine the identity Reverse transcriptase to the nearest recognized species available in the GenBank database. A species-level cutoff of 98% [13] was used to assign sequences to OTUs and chimeras were identified using the Mallard program [30]. MOTHUR ver. 1.23.1 [31] was used to assign sequences to OTUs, and within MOTHUR, the Shannon index [32] and Libshuff analysis were used to assess the methanogen diversity and community structure of each library, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis A total of 27 archaeon sequences from GenBank were used as reference sequences, and two members of the Crenarchaeota, Sulfolobus acidocaldarius (D14053) and Thermoproteus tenax (AY538162), were the outgroup. All 16S rRNA gene clone sequences and the reference sequences were globally aligned using CLUSTAL W [33]. Phylogenetic analysis was performed by using MEGA ver 5.0 [34] using the neighbor-joining algorithm [35], with 1,000 bootstrap resamplings of the dataset [36]. Evolutionary distances between pairs of nucleotide sequences were calculated using Kimura two-parameter model [37]. Nucleotide accession numbers Nucleotide sequences were designed with the prefix QTPYAK (Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau Yak) to represent 16S rRNA gene sequences from the yak clone library, and QTPC (Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau Cattle) for those from the cattle clone library.