Microbiota Of Muskrat And Their Effects On Musk Secretion

Musk,an old traditional perfume,is as valuable as gold.It was used to make top-grade perfume a long time ago,and this precious substance comes from the gland secretion.This secretion is mainly influenced by the animal physiological,sex and variety.However,there is limited information about the relationship between musk secretion and the related microbes in the muskrat(Ondatra zibethicus).In view of this,the present study used muskrat as the experimental animal to extract total DNA from musk and fecal samples followed by using high-throughput DNA sequencing technique to explore the difference in bacterial structure in the muskrat at the different anatomical sites,and the microbial structure of musk and fecal under different musk secretion stages.In total,we collected 129 samples from 8 male muskrats(60 fecal samples,8 gut＿fecal samples,46 musk samples,7 gland samples and 8 skin samples.Total DNA was extracted from musk and fecal samples,and universal prokaryote primer pair 341F/806 R was used to target the V3-V4 hyper-variable region of 16 S r RNA gene via Barcode-PCR amplicon.The qualified PCR products were sent to Company(Novogene Biotechnology,beijing for further downstream analysis using Hi Seq sequencing platform.The results show that:(1)The structure of bacterial communities from different anatomical sites(feces,gut＿fecal,musk,gland,and skinwere different because of the different location on the muskrat.The fecal and gut samples have similar bacterial communities,but they are significantly different from the musk.In the musk,we found some fermentative bacteria,these taxa maybe contribute to the musk formation.(2)In alpha diversity analysis,there was no significant difference between high and low musk secretion stage.While the bacterial composition was significantly different at different musk secretion stages.For example,the Agrobacterium,Methanobrevibacter and Ruminococcus were predominant in the high musk secretion stage.Whereas,the Lactococcus,Mannheimia and Methylobacterium were more abundant in the low musk secretion stage.(3)In alpha diversity analysis,the Shannon,Chao1 and Observed＿species indices were significantly higher at the high musk secretion stage than that in the low musk secretion stage fecal group(P<0.0001).In the community composition,14 bacterial taxa were more abundant in the high musk secretion stage than the low musk secretion stage fecal group.While only 4 taxa that were overrepresented in low musk secretion stage fecal group than the high musk secretion stage.In conclusion,the structure of bacterial communities is different at the different anatomical sites in the muskrat.At the different musk secretion stages,the relative abundance of some predominant microbes changes between high and low musk secretion stages.Also,the fecal microbial structure changed apparently at different musk secretion stages.These changes in the specific bacterial flora maybe related to the musk formation.