Qualitative analysis of the vaginal microbiota of healthy cattle and cattle with genital-tract disease

Genet Mol Res. 2015 Jun 12;14(2):6518-28. doi: 10.4238/2015.June.12.4.

Abstract

The microbial community of the reproductive appara-tus, when known, can provide information about the health of the host. Metagenomics has been used to characterize and obtain genetic infor-mation about microbial communities in various environments and can relate certain diseases with changes in this community composition. In this study, samples of vaginal surface mucosal secretions were col-lected from five healthy cows and five cows that showed symptoms of reproductive disorders. Following high-throughput sequencing of the isolated microbial DNA, data were processed using the Mothur soft-ware to remove low-quality sequences and chimeras, and released to the Ribosomal Database Project for classification of operational taxo-nomic units (OTUs). Local BLASTn was performed and results were loaded into the MEGAN program for viewing profiles and taxonomic microbial attributes. The control profile comprised a total of 15 taxa, with Bacteroides, Enterobacteriaceae, and Victivallis comprising the highest representation of OTUs; the reproductive disorder-positive profile comprised 68 taxa, with Bacteroides, Enterobacteriaceae, His-tophilus, Victivallis, Alistipes, and Coriobacteriaceae being the taxa with the most OTU representation. A change was observed in both the community composition as well as in the microbial attributes of the profiles, suggesting that a relationship might exist between the patho-gen and representative taxa, reflecting the production of metabolites to disease progression.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Bacteria / classification
  • Bacteria / genetics*
  • Bacteria / pathogenicity
  • Cattle
  • Female
  • Metagenomics
  • Microbiota / genetics*
  • Phylogeny
  • RNA, Ribosomal, 16S / genetics
  • Reproductive Tract Infections / microbiology*
  • Reproductive Tract Infections / veterinary
  • Vagina / microbiology*

Substances

  • RNA, Ribosomal, 16S