Extensive Microbial Diversity Within the Chicken Gut Microbiome Revealed by Metagenomics and Culture
Extensive microbial diversity within the chicken gut microbiome revealed by metagenomics and culture Rachel Gilroy1, Anuradha Ravi1, Maria Getino2, Isabella Pursley2, Daniel L. Horton2, Nabil-Fareed Alikhan1, Dave Baker1, Karim Gharbi3, Neil Hall3,4, Mick Watson5, Evelien M. Adriaenssens1, Ebenezer Foster-Nyarko1, Sheikh Jarju6, Arss Secka7, Martin Antonio6, Aharon Oren8, Roy R. Chaudhuri9, Roberto La Ragione2, Falk Hildebrand1,3 and Mark J. Pallen1,2,4 1 Quadram Institute Bioscience, Norwich, UK 2 School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK 3 Earlham Institute, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, UK 4 University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK 5 Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK 6 Medical Research Council Unit The Gambia at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Atlantic Boulevard, Banjul, The Gambia 7 West Africa Livestock Innovation Centre, Banjul, The Gambia 8 Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, The Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, Edmond J. Safra Campus, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel 9 Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK ABSTRACT Background: The chicken is the most abundant food animal in the world. However, despite its importance, the chicken gut microbiome remains largely undefined. Here, we exploit culture-independent and culture-dependent approaches to reveal extensive taxonomic diversity within this complex microbial community. Results: We performed metagenomic sequencing of fifty chicken faecal samples from Submitted 4 December 2020 two breeds and analysed these, alongside all (n = 582) relevant publicly available Accepted 22 January 2021 chicken metagenomes, to cluster over 20 million non-redundant genes and to Published 6 April 2021 construct over 5,500 metagenome-assembled bacterial genomes.
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