The effect of helminth infection on the microbial composition and structure of the caprine abomasal microbiome - PubMed (original) (raw)
The effect of helminth infection on the microbial composition and structure of the caprine abomasal microbiome
Robert W Li et al. Sci Rep. 2016.
Abstract
Haemonchus contortus is arguably the most injurious helminth parasite for small ruminants. We characterized the impact of H. contortus infection on the caprine abomasal microbiome. Fourteen parasite naive goats were inoculated with 5,000 H. contortus infective larvae and followed for 50 days. Six age-matched naïve goats served as uninfected controls. Reduced bodyweight gain and a significant increase in the abosamal pH was observed in infected goats compared to uninfected controls. Infection also increased the bacterial load while reducing the abundance of the Archaea in the abomasum but did not appear to affect microbial diversity. Nevertheless, the infection altered the abundance of approximately 19% of the 432 species-level operational taxonomic units (OTU) detected per sample. A total of 30 taxa displayed a significantly different abundance between control and infected goats. Furthermore, the infection resulted in a distinct difference in the microbiome structure. As many as 8 KEGG pathways were predicted to be significantly affected by infection. In addition, H. contortus-induced changes in butyrate producing bacteria could regulate mucosal inflammation and tissue repair. Our results provided insight into physiological consequences of helminth infection in small ruminants and could facilitate the development of novel control strategies to improve animal and human health.
Figures
Figure 1. Abomasal pH and bodyweight gain during Haemonchus contortus infection in goats.
(A) Abomasal pH. (B) Weight gain (kg). Blue: Uninfected control (N = 6); Red: Infected (_N_=14). ***P value < 0.0001; *P value < 0.05.
Figure 2. Phylum-level microbial composition in the caprine abomasal microbiome.
CT: Uninfected Controls; Inf: Infected.
Figure 3. Rarefaction curves based on Chao1 values. Red: Control (N = 6); Blue: Infected (N = 14).
Error bar: SD.
Figure 4. Distinct differences in microbial composition of the caprine abomasal microbiome between the uninfected control and _Haemonchus contortus_-infected goats.
Principal component analysis (PCA) was performed using the ade4 package in R based on relative abundance of the 10 most abundant microbial families.
Figure 5
(A) a cladogram displaying the taxa with significantly different abundance between the uninfected control and _Haemonchus contortus_-infected goats with an absolute Linear Discriminant Analysis LDA score log10 ≥ 2.0.(B) 30 significantly discriminative taxa with absolute LDA score ≥ 2.0.
Figure 6. Selected microbial taxa displaying significant differences in relative abundance in the caprine abomasal microbiome between uninfected control and H. contortus-infected goats.
X-axis represents the relative abundance of (A): Euryarchaeota. (B) Pasteurellales. (C) Selenomonas ruminantium. Y-axis: individual samples. Straight line: mean abundance value of the group. Dotted Line: median of the group.
Figure 7. KEGG pathways significantly impacted in the abomasal microbiome during Haemonchus contortus infection in goats.
Blue: Uninfected control group (N = 6); Red: H. contortus-infected group (N = 14). ***P value < 0.0001; *P value < 0.01.
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