Peter Kourtev has a simple request for hunters — give him their slain deer stomachs.

Kourtev, an assistant professor of biology who specializes in the structure and function of microbial communities in the environment, is conducting a research project in collaboration with associate biology professor Bradley Swanson on the diversity of bacteria in the stomachs of deer.

“Deer are ruminant animals,” Kourtev said. “Their stomach is much more complex than ours.”

For those willing to donate deer stomachs after a successful hunt, Kourtev said to double-bag the stomach, freeze it and turn it in to himself or Swanson.

“All we need you to do is cut out the stomach and preserve it in a cold area,” he said.

The anatomy

Deer have four stomach chambers, Kourtev said. In two of the chambers, bacteria ferment the corn, leaves, twigs and bark deer consume before going to the intestines.

“My research is about characterizing these microorganisms that originally ferment the food in the deer’s stomach,” Kourtev said.

Through their work, Kourtev and Swanson hope to correlate deer heterozygosity with the diversity of bacteria in their guts, determine the impact of diet and genetics on the microbial community in an individual deer’s stomach and whether the microbial community varies among the four chambers in a deer’s stomach.

Sean Proctor/Staff Photographer Plymouth junior Codi Surowiec, left, and Midland graduate student Michelle Weaver disect a deer stomach on Friday in one of the Brooks Hall research labs. The deer stomachs are donated by hunters. The contents of the deer stomachs are used to study and compare the microbial content of the stomachs.

“When we study the deer, we’re hoping to better understand how the animals digest difficult types of food and apply that knowledge to improve how our cattle digest whatever we feed them,” Kourtev said.

Kourtev said livestock, which have comparable digestive systems to deer, depend on the microorganisms in their system, so having a better understanding of how they digest their food will help farmers reach a maximum productivity level in their cattle.

Time to analyze

Holt senior Sara Trubac, a biology major with a concentration in conservation and natural resources, is the undergraduate student assisting with the research. Her job is to assist with the genetic analysis process.

She currently has 35 deer stomach samples to work with.

“I get a little tube with a tissue sample from a piece of deer stomach and, with that piece, I extract DNA, amplify and analyze it,” she said. “We’re looking at the relatedness of the individuals.”

Trubac said she has completed extracting the DNA and is in the early stages of analyzing it.

Because Kourtev does not have complete genetic data yet, he cannot properly formulate a conclusion. Still, he predicts diet and genetics determine the microbial community in the stomach of deer.

“From what I’ve seen in my studies of the microbial communities so far, it looks like the microbial communities are unique in each deer,” Kourtev said. “It’s as if they are individually catered to that deer.”

Kourtev said the research project will be completed by next summer, but would like more deer samples from the upper and lower peninsulas. This year, he is hoping to get another 35 deer samples.

Kourtev has already presented some of his findings at the American Society for Microbiology conference in Philadelphia last May.

E-mail the author: Carisa Seltz