Rabbit microbiota across the whole body revealed by 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing

Abstract

Background: Rabbit can produce meat, fur and leather, and serves as an important biomedical animal model. Understanding the microbial community of rabbits helps to raise rabbits healthily and better support their application as animal models. Results: In this study, we selected 4 healthy Belgium gray rabbits to collect the microbial samples from 12 body sites, including skin, lung, uterus, mouth, stomach, duodenum, ileum, jejunum, colon, cecum, cecal appendix and rectum. The microbiota across rabbit whole body was investigated via 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. After quality control, 46 samples were retained, and 3,148 qualified ASVs were obtained, representing 23 phyla and 264 genera. Based on the weighted UniFrac distances, these samples were divided into the large intestine (Lin), stomach and small intestine (SSin), uterus (Uter), and skin, mouth and lung (SML) groups. The diversity of Lin microbiota was the highest, followed by those of the SSin, Uter and SML groups. In the whole body, Firmicutes (62.37%), Proteobacteria (13.44%) and Bacteroidota (11.84%) were the most predominant phyla. The relative abundance of Firmicutes in the intestinal tract was significantly higher than that in the non-intestinal site, while Proteobacteria was significantly higher in the non-intestinal site. Among the 264 genera, 35 were the core microbiota distributed in all body sites. Sixty-one genera were specific in the SML group, while 13, 8 and 1 were specifically found in the Lin, SSin and Uter groups, respectively. The Lin group had the most difference with other groups, there were average 72 differential genera between the Lin and other groups. The functional prediction analysis showed that microbial function within each group was similar, but there was a big difference between the intestinal tracts and the non-intestinal group. Notably, the function of microorganism in uterus and mouth were the most different from those in the gastrointestinal sites; rabbit’s coprophagy of consuming soft feces possibly resulted in little differences of microbial function between stomach and large intestinal sites. Conclusion: Our findings improve the knowledge about rabbit microbial communities throughout whole body and give insights into the relationship of microbial communities among different body sites in health rabbits.