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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Infectious Agents and Disease
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2024.1499531

Insights into Microbial Compositions of the Respiratory Tract of Neonatal Dairy Calves in a Longitudinal Probiotic Trial Through 16S rRNA Sequencing

Provisionally accepted
Jia W Tan Jia W Tan 1Susan Dee Eicher Susan Dee Eicher 2Janice E Kritchevsky Janice E Kritchevsky 3Keith A Bryan Keith A Bryan 4Aaron Dickey Aaron Dickey 1Carol Geralyn Chitko-McKown Carol Geralyn Chitko-McKown 1Tara G McDaneld Tara G McDaneld 1*
  • 1 U.S. Meat Animal Research Center, Agricultural Research Service (USDA), Clay Center, United States
  • 2 Livestock Behavior Research Unit, Agricultural Research Service (USDA), West Lafayette, Indiana, United States
  • 3 Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, United States
  • 4 Chr. Hansen, Inc., Milwaukee, WI, United States, part of the Novonesis group, Milwaukee, WI, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Probiotics are a promising intervention for modulating the microbiome and the immune system, promoting health benefits in cattle. While studies have characterized the calf lung bacterial profile with and without oral probiotics, simultaneous probiotic effects on the bacterial populations of multiple sites along the respiratory tract have not been characterized. This study utilized the same pre-weaning diary calf group from our previous studies to characterize the bacterial populations present in the nostril and tonsil across control and treatment groups and nine sampling time points. DNA was exacted from the nostril and tonsil swabs and lung lavage fluids, and 16S ribosomal RNA gene hypervariable regions 1-3 were subsequently sequenced.Temporal variation in alpha bacterial diversity within the nostril, tonsil, and lung lavage samples was observed, indicating distinct bacterial compositions among sampling time points. Oral probiotic treatment did not change alpha diversity in any respiratory tissue, however, spatial variability in bacterial taxa composition was observed among the three respiratory tract regions.While the majority of differentially abundant taxa in probiotic treated calves were unique to their anatomical location, a few were common to two anatomical locations and one Finegoldia amplicon sequence variant was differentially abundant in all three anatomical locations. In conclusion, these findings contribute to the understanding of the dynamic nature of bacterial diversity and the potential effects of probiotics within the bovine respiratory tract and provides insight for future studies of probiotics on animal health, disease prevention, and management.

    Keywords: dairy cattle, 16S rRNA, microbiome, probiotic, Respiratory

    Received: 21 Sep 2024; Accepted: 24 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Tan, Eicher, Kritchevsky, Bryan, Dickey, Chitko-McKown and McDaneld. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Tara G McDaneld, U.S. Meat Animal Research Center, Agricultural Research Service (USDA), Clay Center, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.