Abstract
Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) is a devastating cause of diarrhea in pigs worldwide. Most of studies have focused on molecular and pathogenic characterization of PEDV, whereas there were limited studies in understanding the role of gut microbiota (GM) in viral-associated diarrhea. Here, using the Illumina MiSeq platform, we examined and compared the impact of PEDV infection on the GM of sows and their piglets less than 10 days old. Our results showed that PEDV caused alternations in the structure and abundance of GM from levels of phylum to genus, and even species. For sows, a significant decrease of observed species was found in diarrheal sows than that in healthy sows (p < 0.05). The unweighted and weighted UniFrac distances also revealed considerable segregations of GM structure among healthy, asymptomatic, and diarrheal sows. For piglets, Bacteroidetes, the dominant bacteria in healthy piglets, were replaced by Firmicutes in asymptomatic and diarrheal piglets. The abundances of Fusobacteria and Proteobacteria were also remarkably increased in asymptomatic piglets and diarrheal piglets when compared to those of the healthy piglets. Our findings demonstrated that PEDV infection caused severe perturbations of GM, reduced probiotic bacteria, and enriched pathogenic bacteria.
Highlights
Most of previous studies were mainly focused on the characterization of Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV), virus isolation, pathology, and molecular evolution
The abundance of pooled bacteria determined by next generation sequencing (NGS) showed an average of 85% agreement rate with that of qPCR
It was proved that the primers 27 F/534 R (27 F) and 534R-based PCR could accurately amplify the 16 S rDNA of the microflora and the methodology established was appropriate for unveiling the microbial communities in clinic samples
Summary
Most of previous studies were mainly focused on the characterization of PEDV, virus isolation, pathology, and molecular evolution. Have demonstrated GM perturbations from phylum to genus levels[28,29] Both aforementioned studies showed that Fusobacteria was higher in the PEDV infected pigs than in the healthy groups, and either Verrucomicrobia[28] or most commensal bacteria[29,30,31] were found significantly lower in infected piglets due to the dysbiosis caused by PEDV. Both studies just focused on the nursing or >10-day-old suckling piglets, but did not observe the GM variations in their mother sows and newborn piglets under 10 days old. We analyzed the GM alterations in sows and
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