Ruminococcus
Genus of bacteria
Ruminococcus is a genus of anaerobic bacteria in the family Oscillospiraceae. The type species is Ruminococcus flavefaciens. Members of the genus occur predominantly in the digestive tracts of herbivorous and omnivorous mammals, including ruminants and humans.
Several species formerly classified in Ruminococcus have been transferred to other genera following phylogenetic analyses. Five former species were transferred to Blautia in 2008. Ruminococcus gnavus is now classified as Mediterraneibacter gnavus. In 2026, Ruminococcus albus was transferred to Hominimerdicola as Hominimerdicola alba.
An early coculture study demonstrated interspecies hydrogen transfer between the bacterium then known as Ruminococcus albus and Wolinella succinogenes.
Ruminococcus bromii is considered a keystone species for the degradation of resistant starch in the human colon.
Lower relative abundances of R. callidus and R. bromii have been reported in people with inflammatory bowel disease. Lower relative abundances of sequences classified as Ruminococcus have also been reported in cohorts with Parkinson's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
01Phylogeny
Phylogenomic analyses have demonstrated that species assigned to Ruminococcus do not form a monophyletic group. The reduced tree below shows the placement in Genome Taxonomic Database (GTDB) release R11-RS232.
| 120 marker proteins based GTDB R11-RS232 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Ruminococcus”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Ruminococcus bovis.png by James Gaffney, Jordan Embree, Sean Gilmore and Mallory Embree, CC BY-SA 4.0
Fathomly is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Wikimedia Foundation. Spotted a problem? Tell us.