The Intestinal Eukaryotic Virome in Healthy and Diarrhoeic Neonatal Piglets

PLoS One. 2016 Mar 16;11(3):e0151481. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0151481. eCollection 2016.

Abstract

Neonatal porcine diarrhoea of uncertain aetiology has been reported from a number of European countries. The aim of the present study was to use viral metagenomics to examine a potential viral involvement in this diarrhoea and to describe the intestinal virome with focus on eukaryotic viruses. Samples from the distal jejunum of 50 diarrhoeic and 19 healthy piglets from 10 affected herds were analysed. The viral fraction of the samples was isolated and nucleic acids (RNA and DNA fractions) were subjected to sequence independent amplification. Samples from diarrhoeic piglets from the same herds were pooled whereas samples from healthy piglets were analysed individually. In total, 29 clinical samples, plus two negative controls and one positive control consisting of a mock metagenome were sequenced using the Ion Torrent platform. The resulting sequence data was subjected to taxonomic classification using Kraken, Diamond and HMMER. In the healthy specimens, eight different mammalian virus families were detected (Adenoviridae, Anelloviridae, Astroviridae, Caliciviridae, Circoviridae, Parvoviridae, Picornaviridae, and Reoviridae) compared to four in the pooled diarrhoeic samples (Anelloviridae, Circoviridae, Picornaviridae, and Reoviridae). It was not possible to associate a particular virus family with the investigated diarrhoea. In conclusion, this study does not support the hypothesis that the investigated diarrhoea was caused by known mammalian viruses. The results do, however, indicate that known mammalian viruses were present in the intestine as early as 24-48 hours after birth, indicating immediate infection post-partum or possibly transplacental infection.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Animals, Newborn
  • Case-Control Studies
  • Diarrhea / veterinary*
  • Diarrhea / virology
  • Swine

Grants and funding

Financial support was obtained from The Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning, Formas (221-2012-586) awarded to MB, http://www.formas.se/. This work has been supported by grants from the framework of the EU project AniBioThreat (grant agreement: Home/2009/ISEC/AG/191) with financial support from the Prevention of and Fight against Crime Programme of the European Union, European Commission—Directorate General Home Affairs. This publication reflects views only of the authors, and the European Commission cannot be held responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein (awarded to MB, http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/index_en.htm); Swedish Farmers’ Foundation for Agricultural Research, grant H1050154, Neonatal diarrhoea in piglets- an emergent problem in modern pig production, awarded to MJ, http://www.lantbruksforskning.se/. The authors would like to acknowledge support of the National Genomics Infrastructure (NGI) / Uppsala Genome Center and UPPMAX for providing assistance in massive parallel sequencing and computational infrastructure. Work performed at NGI / Uppsala Genome Center has been funded by RFI/VR and Science for Life Laboratory, Sweden. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.