PCR-DGGE analysis
The Richness values of four samples (NH1, NH2, ND1 and ND2) were 9, 7, 9 and 8, respectively. Shannon values were 2.13, 1.85, 2.05 and 2.02. Evenness values were 0.97, 0.95, 0.93 and 0.97. The diversity of the microbial community did not significantly differ between ND and NH, analyzed
via one-way ANOVA. Cluster analysis showed that ND and NH could be divided into two broad categories, with a similarity index of 0.45, indicating that the intestinal bacterial community structure differed between NH and ND. Although the NH and ND were clustered separately, the respective similarity within each cluster (ND or NH) was not high, indicating that the intestinal bacterial compositions of individual
N. albiflora differed between both groups.
The result of phylogenetic analysis of sequences derived from DGGE bands are listed in the corresponding position of each band (Fig 1). Fifteen sequences were divided into four groups: g-Proteobacteria, Fusobacteria, Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes. Bacteroidetes, Fusobacteria and g-Proteobacteria were detected in both NH and ND; however, most of Fusobacteria were found in ND. Although Firmicutes were only detected in the NH1, the brightness was bright, indicating that it was also an important constituent in the healthy fish intestine. At the species level, the Prevotellaceae bacterium DJF_RP84 (B2), Uncultured
Cetobacterium sp. (B9),
Photobacterium phosphoreum (B5) and
Photobacterium damselae subsp. Damselae (B6) were common species in both NH and ND; however, the abundance of B5, B6 and B9 of ND were significantly higher than that of NH. Uncultured
Photobacterium sp. (B4) derived from the gut of the
Atlantic salmon,
Photobacterium sp. LC12b (B8) derived from the intestine of
Paralichthys adspersus and the Uncultured Vibrionaceae bacterium (B13) of the gulf sample were detected in NH, but were absent in ND. The Uncultured
Cetobacterium sp. Clone (B3) derived from the intestine of
Hexagrammos otakii,
Cetobacterium sp. ZWU0022 (B7) derived from the intestine of the
zebra fish and Uncultured
Cetobacterium sp. (B11) of a seawater sample were detected in ND, but were absent in NH. In addition to these bacteria, several species of bacteria were only detected in individual samples, for example,
Lactococcus lactis (B10) and
Lactococcus garvieae (B1) were only found in NH1, but were absent in other samples.
Photobacterium leiognathi (B12), derived from the light organ of
Gazzaminuta was detected in ND2.
Photobacterium sp. KR08-01 (B14) of the seawater sample and Uncultured
Photobacterium sp. (B15) of the marsh sample were both detected in ND1.
Analyses of the pyrosequencing-derived dataset
A total of 198441 valid reads (mean 49610±1208 reads) were obtained from four samples
via Illumina pyrosequencing analysis at a similarity level of 97%. To avoid effects of uneven sampling, 21210 reads were randomly selected from each sample for subsequent sequence analysis. The diversity analysis (Table 1) showed that the coverage of four samples was higher than 99%, indicating that the sequencing depth of the bacterial community in this study tended to saturate. The differences of OTUs, ACE, Chao, Shannon and Simpson values of each sample were significant; however, there no significant difference was found between the NH and ND (P>0.05).
The sequences of four samples were classified via the Silva database. All sequences were divided into six groups and other sparse groups (<1%) were merged into the “Others” group (Fig 2). g-Proteobacteria was the most dominant group found in
Nibea albiflora (41.12% of total sequence), while Fusobacteria and Firmicutes were sub-dominant groups (39.37%, 14.94%). Bacteroidetes, β-Proteobacteria and Tenericutes were 2.95%, 1.29% and 0.38% respectively and other groups accounted for 0.4%. The relative abundance of bacterial phyla in the intestinal content differed significantly between NH and ND
. In NH, more g-Proteobacteria was found than in ND (33.13% and 73.77% in NH, while 32.12% and 25.46% in ND). Fusobacteria (53.54% and 71.96% in ND, while 10.73% and 21.26% in NH) and Bacteroidetes (9.5% and 1.04% in ND, while 1.12% and 0.14% in NH) were richer in NH than in ND. Firmicutes were particularly abundant in NH1 (53.29% and 3.20% in NH, while 2.63% and 0.65% in ND). β-Proteobacteria accounted for 3.35% of NH1, while the remaining microbial supplied less than 1%. Tenericutes was at a very low abundance in all samples and only ND1 exceeded 1%, while others were less than 0.2%.
At the genus level, all sequences were divided into 16 groups and the other scarce groups (<1%) were merged into the group “Others”.
Cetobacterium was the most dominant group in
Nibea albiflora (39.07% of total sequence),
Photobacterium formed a sub-dominant group (31.96%) and the abundances of other groups were below 10% (Fig 3). Many differences could be found between the intestinal bacterial composition of NH and ND.
Cetobacterium was the most common dominant bacteria in ND (ND1: 52.87%; ND2: 71.74%), but was less prevalent in NH (NH1: 10.71%; NH2: 20.96%).
Photobacterium was richer in NH (22.18% and 71.63% in NH, while13.22% and 20.83% in ND).
Lactococcus was only present in NH, particularly in NH1 (NH1, 39.11%; NH2, 0.41%). Other groups, such as
Enterococcus,
Acinetobacter and
Lactobacillus were mainly present in NH (accounting for 0.2%-5.8%) and remained below 0.3% in ND.
Brevibacillus, unclassified
Pseudomonadales and
Massiliawere only present in one sample of NH (1.45-4.38%). Other groups such as the Bacteroidales S24-7 group (ND1, 5.29%; ND2, 1.07%) and
Enterovibrio (ND1, 13.85%; ND2, 4.68%) were more widespread in ND and the proportion of NH was below 1%.
Bacteroides,
Vibrio, Escherichia-Shigella, Alloprevotella and
Prevotellaceae_UCG-001 were only present in one sample of ND with an abundance above 1%, while they were detected at little or no abundance in other samples.
To compare the composition of the intestinal bacterial communities, the principal component analysis was conducted of four samples at the OTU level. PC1 and PC2 accounted for 71.73% and 25.76% of the total variation, respectively (Fig 4). Fig 4 shows that two samples of ND clustered together and were distant from the NH1 and NH2
via PC1, while NH1 were far from NH2
via PC2. This indicates a significant difference between the composition of intestinal bacterial communities of healthy and diseased
Nibea albiflora and also between individuals of NH. The PCA results at the phyla and genus level were similar.
Venn diagrams were constructed to identify unique and shared OTUs of the four samples. The number of shared OTUs among the four samples were 10 (Fig 5). The shared OTUs mainly belonged to Fusobacteria and g-Proteobacteria. Furthermore, the corresponding species were as follows: Uncultured or unclassified
Cetobacterium (50.98% of shared OTUs of four samples),
Photobacterium kishitanii (29.54%), unclassified
Photobacterium sp. (10.96%), unclassified
Enterovibrio (6.55%) and unclassidied
Vibrio (1.40%), while the remaining accounted for less than 1%. Some OTUs were only present in NH or ND. Nine OTUs were only detected in NH and mainly belonged to Firmicutes and Proteobacteria. Corresponding species were as follows: Unclassified
Lactococcus (59.64%),
Lactococcus garvieae ATCC49156 (18.58%), unclassified
Enterococcus (12.32%), unclassified
Lactobacillus (6.64%), unclassified
Vagococcus (1.17%),
Cupriavidus basilensis (0.94%), unclassified
Photobacterium (0.32%),
Photobacterium kishitanii (0.37%) and unclassified
Cupriavidus (0.01%). The two OTUs uncultured Bacteroidales (99.76%) and unclassified
Myroides (0.24%), were only present in ND.
This study utilized PCR-DGGE and Illumina Miseq sequencing to detect the V3 and V4-V5 of the 16S rRNA of four samples, thus investigating the intestinal bacterial composition of healthy and diseased
Nibea albiflora. As far as we know, this is the first such report for
Nibea albiflora.
The intestinal content samples were dominated by four major phyla: g-Proteobacteria, Fusobacteria, Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes, which have often been detected in the intestine of fish, such as
rainbow trout,
grass carp and
Atlantic cod (
Ringo et al., 2006,
Desai et al., 2012, Li et al., 2013) and thus these belong to the core intestinal microbiota of fish
(Wu et al., 2012, Wong et al., 2013). g-Proteobacteria and Fusobacteria were also dominant bacteria of
zebra fish and
bighead carp (
Roeselers et al., 2011,
Li et al., 2015). Previous studies indicated that Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes were dominant bacteria of both
Asian seabass and
grass carp (
Wu et al., 2012, Xia et al., 2014). However, in this study, Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes were abundant in NH1 and ND1, respectively, while in other samples, Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes were not abundant. At the genus level, this study not only found several common taxa for the fish intestine (such as
Cetobacterium and
Photobacterium), but also detected several low abundance bacteria, such as
Massili, Escherichia-Shigella, Alloprevotella (
Nayak 2010)
.
Both of the DGGE clustering and PCA analysis of IlluminaMiseq sequencing showed obvious differences of intestinal microbiota between NH and ND within the same environment. At the phyla level, g-Proteobacteria and Firmicutes were richer in NH, while Fusobacteria and Bacteroidetes were richer in ND. The bacteria belonging to Fusobacteria all were classified as uncultured or unclassfied bacteria of
Cetobacterium and were more abundant in ND than in NH. Previous research has shown that
Cetobacterium can produce vitamin B12, ferment peptides and carbohydrates
(Li et al., 2015). Furthermore,
Cetobacterium has been detected in many fish, such as the
zebra fish (Stephens et al., 2016) and
Hexagrammos otakii (GenBank description, accession number HM031456). About 75.66% of the bacteria of g-Proteobacteria belonged to
Photobacterium and were more common in NH than in ND. These bacteria were most similar to the uncultured clone sequence or strains isolated from the light organs of Leiognathidae fish
(Boisvert et al., 1967). In addition to
Photobacterium, two members of g-Proteobacteria,
Enterovibrio and
Vibrio, were detected at higher abundance and more of them were found in ND compared to NH. Many marine vibrio are common aquatic pathogens and under the influence of extrensic factors (such as environmental pollution), they can lead to surface discoloration of fish and bleeding or inflammation of the liver, kidney, spleen and intestine of fish.
The abundance of Firmicutes was significantly higher in NH (94.59%) than in ND (5.41%). At the genus level,
Brevibacillus, Lactobacillus, Lactococcusand
Enterococcus supplied more than 1% in NH, but less than 0.3% in ND. At the OTU level, the bacteria that were only detected in NH and that had an abundance of more than 5% were the unclassfied
Enterococcus, Lactobacillus and
Lactococcus, which are commonly used probiotics (
Nayak 2010). A previous study has shown that probiotics (
Lactobacillus, Streptococcus and
Lactococcus) provide disease prevention and immune repair for the host
(Balcazar et al., 2006). Adding Brevibacillus to the feed can improve the activity of fish digestive enzymes
(Shen et al., 2010). Enterococcus faecalis provides a good immune response to
Vibrio anguillarum (Estrada
et al., 2009). More probiotic bacteria that were detected in NH may be concerened with the healthy status of the
Nibea albiflora. The abundance of Bacteroidetes was richer in ND than in NH. However, the Bacteroidetes found in this study were basically uncultured or unclassified bacteria and consequently, the relationship between these unknown species and the health status of
Nibea albiflora requires further study.