The gastrointestinal tract of farmed mink (Neovison vison) maintains a diverse mucosa-associated microbiota following a 3-day fasting period.

Martin I Bahl,Søren Skov,Tove Clausen,Lars Andresen,Anne S Hammer,Anabelle Jakobsen

doi:10.1002/mbo3.434

Martin I Bahl, Søren Skov + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.1002/mbo3.434

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Abstract

Although it is well documented that the gut microbiota plays an important role in health and disease in mammalian species, this area has been poorly studied among carnivorous animals, especially within the mustelidae family. The gastrointestinal tract of carnivores is characterized by its short length and fast transit time, as compared to omnivores and herbivores, which is due to the low level of inherent fermentation. Mink represents an example of this, which have a GI tract only four times the length of the body and a transit time of approximately 4–5 hr. In this study, we used high‐throughput 16S rRNA gene sequencing to explore the resident gut microbiota of the mink in terms of intra‐and interindividual diversity. We report, for the first time, that the mucosa‐associated bacterial community within the colon is diverse and dissimilar from the community found in the feed. We found large interindividual differences in bacterial composition between individual animals being dominated generally by the phylum Firmicutes, but in some cases also Proteobacteria or Fusobacteria. The bacterial load and community structure within the mucus was not severely impacted by 3 days of fasting, which implies that a resident and stable microbiota is hosted by these animals.

Highlights

The gut microbial community composition of carnivores in general appears distinct from that of omnivores and herbivores (Ley et al, 2008) and is vastly dominated by species belonging to the Firmicutes phylum, and comparatively few Bacteroidetes as demonstrated by 16S rRNA gene sequencing of fecal samples from, for example, cats and dogs (Garcia-Mazcorro et al, 2012; Handl et al, 2011)
Looking at the mink microbiota (Neovison vison), it has been shown by culturing that the highest bacterial load was found in the colon with up to 108 CFU/g, which is approximately 2–4 orders of magnitude lower than that found in many other mammals, which could be due to the short intestinal tract and fast transit time in the gut (Williams, Elnif, & Buddington, 1998)
Due to the short intestinal tract and fast transit time in the gut of the mink, one could speculate that the microbial community of mink may reflect that of their feed

Summary

| INTRODUCTION

The gut microbial community composition of carnivores in general appears distinct from that of omnivores and herbivores (Ley et al, 2008) and is vastly dominated by species belonging to the Firmicutes phylum, and comparatively few Bacteroidetes as demonstrated by 16S rRNA gene sequencing of fecal samples from, for example, cats and dogs (Garcia-Mazcorro et al, 2012; Handl et al, 2011). There have been few investigations of the mink gut microbiota and they have mostly applied conventional culture-based methods (Vulfson et al, 2001, 2003; Williams et al, 1998) In these studies, bacteria were cultured from most, but not all samples and bacterial composition and counts were shown to vary significantly through the growth season. Changes induced by fasting in canine jejunal microbiota composition have been shown to subside once the animals return to normal feeding (Kasiraj et al, 2016) This indicates an overall resilience to this form of perturbation, similar to what is often observed following antibiotic treatment (Dethlefsen et al, 2008). We investigate the structure and resilience of the mink mucosa-associated microbial community to 3 days of fasting and further examine physiological effects caused by this feed deprivation

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Findings

| DISCUSSION