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Ecological Characterisation of the Colonic Microbiota in Arctic and Sub-Arctic Seals

  • Environmental Microbiology
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Abstract

Dominant colonic bacteria in wild hooded (n = 9), harbour (n = 1) and grey (n = 1) seals were identified using 16S rRNA gene clone libraries (313 clones), revealing 52.7% Bacteroidetes, 41.5% Firmicutes, 4.5% Proteobacteria and 1.0% Fusobacteria. Thirty (77%) of the 39 phylotypes identified were novel, showing <97% sequence similarity to their nearest cultivated relatives. Mean colonic bacterial cell density, determined by real-time PCR, was high (12.8 log10 cells/g wet wt) for the hooded seals, while the number of methanogenic Archea was low (4.0 log10 cells/g wet wt). The level of ampicillin (ampr) and tetracycline-resistant (tetr) isolates was investigated by cultivation. Aerobic ampr isolates were only detected in colon contents from four hooded seals, whereas aerobic tetr isolates were found in seven of the nine hooded seals. These data provide novel insight to the gut microbiota of Arctic and sub-Arctic seals living in the wild.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Prof. Arnoldus Schytte Blix, Prof. Lars P. Folkow and Prof. Karl-Arne Stokkan at the Department of Arctic and Marine Biology, University of Tromsø, for the possibility to take part in the expedition to the Greenland Sea and for their advice and help throughout the expedition. We also thank Prof. Stokkan for sampling the harbour and grey seals at the coast of Northern Norway. We are grateful to Dr. Lise Norgård (GenØk-Centre for Biosafety, Tromsø) for assistance in the field collecting the hooded seal samples and Korinne Northwood at CSIRO (Brisbane, Australia) for assistance with real-time PCR. This study was funded by the Norwegian Research Council and the Roald Amundsen Centre for Arctic Research (University of Tromsø, Norway).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pharmacy, University of Tromsø, 9037, Tromsø, Norway

    Trine Glad, Vibeke Fam Kristiansen & Kaare M. Nielsen

  2. Department of Arctic and Marine Biology, University of Tromsø, 9037, Tromsø, Norway

    Trine Glad, Vibeke Fam Kristiansen & Monica A. Sundset

  3. GenØk-Center for Biosafety, Research Park, 9294, Tromsø, Norway

    Kaare M. Nielsen

  4. Faculty of Science and Technology, Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, 39100, Bolzano, Italy

    Lorenzo Brusetti

  5. Department of Animal Science, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, 05405, USA

    André-Denis G. Wright

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  1. Trine Glad
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Correspondence to Trine Glad.

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Glad, T., Kristiansen, V.F., Nielsen, K.M. et al. Ecological Characterisation of the Colonic Microbiota in Arctic and Sub-Arctic Seals. Microb Ecol 60, 320–330 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-010-9690-x

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