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©The Author(s) 2023. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Comparative analysis of the gut microbiota of wild adult rats from nine district areas in Hainan, China
Li-Na Niu, Guan-Nan Zhang, Duan-Duan Xuan, Chong Lin, Zi Lu, Pei-Pei Cao, Shao-Wen Chen, Yong Zhang, Xiu-Ji Cui, Shou-Kui Hu
Li-Na Niu, Guan-Nan Zhang, Pei-Pei Cao, Yong Zhang, Xiu-Ji Cui, Key Laboratory of Tropical Translational Medicine of Ministry of Education, Hainan Medical University, Haikou 571199, Hainan Province, China
Li-Na Niu, Guan-Nan Zhang, Pei-Pei Cao, Yong Zhang, Xiu-Ji Cui, The University of Hong Kong Joint Laboratory of Tropical Infectious Diseases, Hainan Medical University, Haikou 571199, Hainan Province, China
Li-Na Niu, Guan-Nan Zhang, Pei-Pei Cao, Yong Zhang, Xiu-Ji Cui, Department of Pathogen Biology, Hainan Medical University, Haikou 571199, Hainan Province, China
Duan-Duan Xuan, Department of Laboratory, Xinxiang First People's Hospital, Xinxiang 453000, Henan Province, China
Chong Lin, Zi Lu, Shao-Wen Chen, Department of Laboratory, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Hainan Medical University, Haikou 570311, Hainan Province, China
Shou-Kui Hu, Department of Clinical Laboratory, Peking University Shougang Hospital, Beijing 100144, China
Author contributions: Niu LN, Zhang GN, Xuan DD, Lin C and Lu Z contributed equally; Niu LN contributed to the conceptualization; Zhang GN, Xuan DD, and Cao PP performed the data curation; Lu Z, Chen SW, and Zhang Y contributed to the formal analysis; Cao PP, Cui XJ, and Lu Z performed the investigation; Niu LN, and Lin C performed the methodology; Hu SK, and Lin C contributed to the supervision; Niu LN, Zhang GN, Xuan DD, and Hu SK wrote the original draft; All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.
Supported by Hainan Province Science and Technology Special Fund, No. ZDYF2022SHFZ114; Hainan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 820RC650; National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 82060377; Innovative Research Project for Graduate Students of Hainan Medical University, No. HYYS2020-18, No. HYYS2021A09, and No. HYYS2021A22.
Institutional animal care and use committee statement: The study was approved by the Animal Ethics Committee of Hainan Medical University, China. We confirmed that all methods were performed under the relevant guidelines and regulations.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: The study's datasets have been added to the Sequence Read Archive repository (SRA). This item has accession number PRJNA767903.
ARRIVE guidelines statement: The authors have read the ARRIVE guidelines, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the ARRIVE guidelines.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See:
https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Corresponding author: Shou-Kui Hu, MD, Professor, Department of Clinical Laboratory, Peking University Shougang Hospital, No. 9 Jinyuanzhuang Road, Shijingshan District, Beijing 100144, China. shoukuihu@163.com
Received: March 28, 2023
Peer-review started: March 28, 2023
First decision: April 10, 2023
Revised: April 19, 2023
Accepted: May 16, 2023
Article in press: May 16, 2023
Published online: June 14, 2023
BACKGROUND
Wild rats have the potential to hold zoonotic infectious agents that can spread to humans and cause disease.
AIM
To better understand the composition of gut bacterial communities in rats is essential for preventing and treating such diseases. As a tropical island located in the south of China, Hainan province has abundant rat species. Here, we examined the gut bacterial composition in wild adult rats from Hainan province.
METHODS
Fresh fecal samples were collected from 162 wild adult rats, including three species (Rattus norvegicus, Leopoldamys edwardsi, and Rattus losea), from nine regions of Hainan province between 2017-2018.
RESULTS
We analyzed the composition of gut microbiota using the 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. We identified 4903 bacterial operational taxonomic units (30 phyla, 175 families, and 498 genera), which vary between samples of different rat species in various habitats at various times of the year. In general, Firmicutes were the most abundant phyla, followed by Bacteroidetes (15.55%), Proteobacteria (6.13%), and Actinobacteria (4.02%). The genus Lactobacillus (20.08%), unidentified_Clostridiales (5.16%), Romboutsia (4.33%), unidentified_Ruminococcaceae (3.83%), Bacteroides (3.66%), Helicobacter (2.40%) and Streptococcus (2.37%) were dominant.
CONCLUSION
The composition and abundance of the gut microbial communities varied between rat species and locations. This work provides fundamental information to identify microbial communities useful for disease control in Hainan province.
Core Tip: Several researches have investigated the microbial communities in arthropods but few researches have investigated microbial diversity in wild rats’ gut in Hainan province. Here, by 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing we compared the gut bacterial communities in fecal samples from 162 wild rats of three species and nine geographic locations in Hainan.
