Two hundred and fifty-four metagenome-assembled bacterial genomes from the bank vole gut microbiota.
Abstract Vertebrate gut microbiota provide many essential services to their host. To better understand the diversity of such services provided by gut microbiota in wild rodents, we assembled metagenome shotgun sequence data from a small mammal, the bank vole Myodes glareolus (Rodentia, Cricetidae). We were able to identify 254 metagenome assembled genomes (MAGs) that were at least 50% ( n = 133 MAGs), 80% ( n = 77 MAGs) or 95% ( n = 44 MAGs) complete. As typical for a rodent gut microbiota, these MAGs are dominated by taxa assigned to the phyla Bacteroidetes ( n = 132 MAGs) and Firmicutes ( n = 80), with some Spirochaetes ( n = 15) and Proteobacteria ( n = 11). Based on coverage over…
Environmental radiation alters the gut microbiome of the bank vole Myodes glareolus.
International audience; Gut microbiota composition depends on many factors, although the impact of environmental pollution is largely unknown. We used amplicon sequencing of bacterial 16S rRNA genes to quantify whether anthropogenic radionuclides at Chernobyl (Ukraine) impact the gut microbiome of the bank vole Myodes glareolus. Exposure to elevated levels of environmental radionuclides had no detectable effect on the gut community richness but was associated with an almost twofold increase in the Firmicutes:Bacteroidetes ratio. Animals inhabiting uncontaminated areas had remarkably similar gut communities irrespective of their proximity to the nuclear power plant. Hence, samples could be c…