Suen is an associate professor of bacteriology and an Alfred Toepfer Faculty Fellow at UW–Madison. His research interests include herbivore-associated microbial ecology, rumen microbiology, metagenomics, and biofuels.
Postdoc: Juliana Young (pictured above) received her PhD in Animal Science and Nutrition and Production of Ruminants from the University of Viçosa in Brazil, where she developed a breadth of computational and data analysis skills through her many research positions. Young will be mentored by Garret Suen from the department of Bacteriology.
A healthy and optimal rumen microbiome is critical to the wellbeing of highly productive dairy cows. Current methods for rumen sampling are invasive, laborious, and infeasible for large herds. A non-invasive method known as buccal swabbing was recently proposed as a proxy for the rumen microbiota. This project is expanding on prior research relating to the sustainability and evaluation of confounding factors that impact the comparability of buccal swab sampling with in-situ rumen samples. Researchers will investigate buccal swabbing’s effectiveness in capturing other ruminal microbes (fungi and archaea) and ruminal volatile fatty acids.Additionally, researchers plan to determine if ruminal functional genes can be recapitulated from buccal swabs using shotgun metagenomics. The team will also be applying buccal swabs to detect the onset and persistence of subacute ruminal acidosis, a metabolic disease, which is associated with shifts in the ruminal microbiome.