the microbiomes of Australia's macropods. This information was obtained by sampling the foregut's bacterial communities of twenty grazing macropods. The fermentative properties of macropods' foreguts are similar to those of the rumen of ruminants. The foregut community samples were then sequenced via 454-amplicon pyrosequencing. After sequencing, the 16S rRNA gene and its V3/V4 region were specifically analyzed in order to obtain the present OTUs. In addition to Ruminococcaceae, Bacteroidales, and Prevotella spp., S. sucromutans was found to be one of eleven prominent OTUs present. Industrial Applications The earth's growing human population causes the production of large amounts of biological wastes, or biomass. Biogas plants play a key role in converting such wastes into “biogas” which can later be converted into usable energy. Through utilizing a wide variety of bacterial and archaeal metabolic processes, biogas plants take biological wastes and change them into chemicals such as methane, carbon dioxide, water, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide, and oxygen. S. sucromutans can often be found within these microbial communities carrying out the metabolic function of acetogenesis. This data can be obtained through sampling the microbial community of a biogas plant over a couple years. PCR denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis is used to identify the 16S rRNA, and then the sequences are run through 16S rDNA reconstruction libraries. References External links ATCC Page for Syntrophococcus sucromutans Type strain of Syntrophococcus sucromutans at BacDive - the Bacterial Diversity Metadatabase Lachnospiraceae Bacteria described in 1986