Brain Meta-Transcriptomics from Harbor Seals to Infer the Role of the Microbiome and Virome in a Stranding Event

Marine diseases are becoming more frequent, and tools for identifying pathogens and disease reservoirs are needed to help prevent and mitigate epizootics. Meta-transcriptomics provides insights into disease etiology by cataloguing and comparing sequences from suspected pathogens. This method is a po...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Rosales, Stephanie M., Vega Thurber, Rebecca
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2015
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4668051/

id	pubmed-4668051
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-46680512015-12-10 Brain Meta-Transcriptomics from Harbor Seals to Infer the Role of the Microbiome and Virome in a Stranding Event Rosales, Stephanie M. Vega Thurber, Rebecca Research Article Marine diseases are becoming more frequent, and tools for identifying pathogens and disease reservoirs are needed to help prevent and mitigate epizootics. Meta-transcriptomics provides insights into disease etiology by cataloguing and comparing sequences from suspected pathogens. This method is a powerful approach to simultaneously evaluate both the viral and bacterial communities, but few studies have applied this technique in marine systems. In 2009 seven harbor seals, Phoca vitulina, stranded along the California coast from a similar brain disease of unknown cause of death (UCD). We evaluated the differences between the virome and microbiome of UCDs and harbor seals with known causes of death. Here we determined that UCD stranded animals had no viruses in their brain tissue. However, in the bacterial community, we identified Burkholderia and Coxiella burnetii as important pathogens associated with this stranding event. Burkholderia were 100% prevalent and ~2.8 log2 fold more abundant in the UCD animals. Further, while C. burnetii was found in only 35.7% of all samples, it was highly abundant (~94% of the total microbial community) in a single individual. In this harbor seal, C. burnetii showed high transcription rates of invading and translation genes, implicating it in the pathogenesis of this animal. Based on these data we propose that Burkholderia taxa and C. burnetii are potentially important opportunistic neurotropic pathogens in UCD stranded harbor seals. Public Library of Science 2015-12-02 /pmc/articles/PMC4668051/ /pubmed/26630132 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0143944 Text en © 2015 Rosales, Vega Thurber http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Rosales, Stephanie M. Vega Thurber, Rebecca
spellingShingle	Rosales, Stephanie M. Vega Thurber, Rebecca Brain Meta-Transcriptomics from Harbor Seals to Infer the Role of the Microbiome and Virome in a Stranding Event
author_facet	Rosales, Stephanie M. Vega Thurber, Rebecca
author_sort	Rosales, Stephanie M.
title	Brain Meta-Transcriptomics from Harbor Seals to Infer the Role of the Microbiome and Virome in a Stranding Event
title_short	Brain Meta-Transcriptomics from Harbor Seals to Infer the Role of the Microbiome and Virome in a Stranding Event
title_full	Brain Meta-Transcriptomics from Harbor Seals to Infer the Role of the Microbiome and Virome in a Stranding Event
title_fullStr	Brain Meta-Transcriptomics from Harbor Seals to Infer the Role of the Microbiome and Virome in a Stranding Event
title_full_unstemmed	Brain Meta-Transcriptomics from Harbor Seals to Infer the Role of the Microbiome and Virome in a Stranding Event
title_sort	brain meta-transcriptomics from harbor seals to infer the role of the microbiome and virome in a stranding event
description	Marine diseases are becoming more frequent, and tools for identifying pathogens and disease reservoirs are needed to help prevent and mitigate epizootics. Meta-transcriptomics provides insights into disease etiology by cataloguing and comparing sequences from suspected pathogens. This method is a powerful approach to simultaneously evaluate both the viral and bacterial communities, but few studies have applied this technique in marine systems. In 2009 seven harbor seals, Phoca vitulina, stranded along the California coast from a similar brain disease of unknown cause of death (UCD). We evaluated the differences between the virome and microbiome of UCDs and harbor seals with known causes of death. Here we determined that UCD stranded animals had no viruses in their brain tissue. However, in the bacterial community, we identified Burkholderia and Coxiella burnetii as important pathogens associated with this stranding event. Burkholderia were 100% prevalent and ~2.8 log2 fold more abundant in the UCD animals. Further, while C. burnetii was found in only 35.7% of all samples, it was highly abundant (~94% of the total microbial community) in a single individual. In this harbor seal, C. burnetii showed high transcription rates of invading and translation genes, implicating it in the pathogenesis of this animal. Based on these data we propose that Burkholderia taxa and C. burnetii are potentially important opportunistic neurotropic pathogens in UCD stranded harbor seals.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2015
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4668051/
_version_	1613509012465123328

Brain Meta-Transcriptomics from Harbor Seals to Infer the Role of the Microbiome and Virome in a Stranding Event

Similar Items