Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

Jewish Business News

Health

Israeli Researchers Find New Way To Cut Methane And Greenhouse Gases Cattle Produce

For the first time, researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) have learned to control the microbiome of cattle. Reducing methane production in cows will reduce global warming.

For the first time, researchers have discovered a method to control the microbiome of cattle. This could play an important role in the prevention of methane emissions in them, and therefore reduce a major source of greenhouse gasses.

The findings of the study conducted by  Prof. Itzhak Mizrahi at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), were published recently in  Nature Communications.

Please help us out :
Will you offer us a hand? Every gift, regardless of size, fuels our future.
Your critical contribution enables us to maintain our independence from shareholders or wealthy owners, allowing us to keep up reporting without bias. It means we can continue to make Jewish Business News available to everyone.
You can support us for as little as $1 via PayPal at office@jewishbusinessnews.com.
Thank you.

“Now that we know we can influence the microbiome development, we can use this knowledge to modulate microbiome composition to lower the environmental impact of methane from cows by guiding them to our desired outcomes,” said Prof. Mizrahi.

Prof. Mizrahi has studied the microbiome of animals like fish, cows, and other species to address world issues shaped by climate change. Reducing methane emissions from cows will reduce global warming. Engineering healthier fish, which is another of Mizrahi’s projects, is especially important as the oceans empty of fish and aquaculture becomes the major source of seafood.

The microbiome as general and specific in animals is a scientifically unexplored area. We know It protects the body against germs, it breaks down food to release energy, and it produces vitamins. We also know it exerts great control over many aspects of animal and human physical systems. Microbes are introduced at birth and produce a unique microbiome that evolves over time.

Mizrahi and his team have been conducting a three-year experiment with 50 cows divided into two groups.
One group gave birth naturally, and the other through cesarean section.
That difference was enough to change the microbiome development and composition microbiome of the cows from each group.

This finding enabled Mizrahi’s team together with Prof. Eran Halperin’s group at UCLA to develop an algorithm that predicts the microbiome development and how it will evolve over time based on its present composition.

 

Newsletter



Advertisement

You May Also Like

World News

In the 15th Nov 2015 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:   ·         A new Israeli treatment brings hope to relapsed leukemia...

Entertainment

The Movie The Professional is what made Natalie Portman a Lolita.

Travel

After two decades without a rating system in Israel, at the end of 2012 an international tender for hotel rating was published.  Invited to place bids...

VC, Investments

You may not become a millionaire, but there is a lot to learn from George Soros.