Harrison Xavier A, Sewell Thomas, Fisher Matthew, Antwis Rachael E
Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London, London, United Kingdom.
Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter, Penryn, United Kingdom.
Front Microbiol. 2020 Jan 22;10:3134. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2019.03134. eCollection 2019.
Host-associated microbes form an important component of immunity that protect against infection by pathogens. Treating wild individuals with these protective microbes, known as probiotics, can reduce rates of infection and disease in both wild and captive settings. However, the utility of probiotics for tackling wildlife disease requires that they offer consistent protection across the broad genomic variation of the pathogen that hosts can encounter in natural settings. Here we develop multi-isolate probiotic consortia with the aim of effecting broad-spectrum inhibition of growth of the lethal amphibian pathogen () when tested against nine isolates from two distinct lineages. Though we achieved strong growth inhibition between 70 and 100% for seven isolates, two isolates appeared consistently resistant to inhibition, irrespective of probiotic strategy employed. We found no evidence that genomic relatedness of the chytrid predicted similarity of inhibition scores, nor that increasing the genetic diversity of the bacterial consortia could offer stronger inhibition of pathogen growth, even for the two resistant isolates. Our findings have important consequences for the application of probiotics to mitigate wildlife diseases in the face of extensive pathogen genomic variation.
与宿主相关的微生物构成了免疫的重要组成部分，可抵御病原体感染。用这些被称为益生菌的保护性微生物治疗野生动物个体，可以降低野生和圈养环境中的感染率和疾病发生率。然而，益生菌在应对野生动物疾病方面的效用要求它们能够在宿主在自然环境中可能遇到的病原体广泛基因组变异范围内提供一致的保护。在此，我们开发了多菌株益生菌组合，旨在针对来自两个不同谱系的9个蛙壶菌分离株进行测试时，对致命两栖类病原体（蛙壶菌）的生长实现广谱抑制。尽管我们对7个蛙壶菌分离株实现了70%至100%的强烈生长抑制，但有两个分离株无论采用何种益生菌策略，似乎始终对抑制有抗性。我们没有发现证据表明壶菌的基因组相关性可预测抑制分数的相似性，也没有发现增加细菌组合的遗传多样性能够对病原体生长提供更强抑制的证据，即使对于两个抗性分离株也是如此。我们的研究结果对于在面对广泛的病原体基因组变异时应用益生菌来减轻野生动物疾病具有重要意义。
