Ruminants have a varied population of bacteria, fungus, and protozoa in their rumens. Ruminants may digest plant nutrients thanks to a mechanism of symbiosis with microbes. Due to their high cost, many commercial enzymes for the bioconversion of cellulose-containing materials into simple, easily digestible sugars are hard to come by, which limits their usefulness. Finding bacterial strains that can produce different hydrolytic enzymes - among which the complex of cellulolytic enzymes is of special interest - seems pertinent in this regard.

In the course of research, more than 20 strains of bacteria have been found from the rumen of domestic animals. To identify producers of cellulolytic enzymes, we screened obtained aerobic spore-forming bacteria of the genus Bacillus. As a result, we discovered that 6 strains of Bacillus subtilis have the ability to degrade carboxymethylcellulose.