Equine Hindgut Research Paper

Microbiome of the Equine Hindgut

Gastrointestinal microbiota play an essential role not only in digestion, but also in colonic diseases. The gut microbiome is one of the densest, most dynamic, and complex microorganism populations located in the intestines [7]. If these microbes become unbalanced, this could result in gastrointestinal disease and even death. This unbalanced microbiome allows opportunistic and pathogenic bacteria to proliferate and can cause numerous gastrointestinal diseases such as colic. Next Generation Sequencing

In literature, gastrointestinal microbiota in general has been the most studied microbiota; however, equine microbiota has not been extensively studied [4]. Only superficial knowledge exists on the equine hindgut

However, little information has been conducted on what is happening internally, specifically to the cecum microbiome. Past studies, have used sacrificed and cannulated horses to collect cecal fluid to analyze the population of the microbiome with DNA sequencing. DNA sequencing is used to determine the exact order of nucleotides within a DNA strand. This allows scientists to study normal genes, but also compares normal genes to disease-causing versions. However, lack of technology and sequencings techniques have hindered scientists to develop a full picture of the changes to the microbiome. Currently, next generation sequencing (NGS) is of the latest technology, which allows the genomic content of interest, multiple samples, to be analyzed in a single experiment, quicker and more cost effective than the past methods of DNA sequencing method. This technology parallelizes the process, running multiple DNA templates simultaneously, resulting in millions of sequences

Metagenomics, one of the fastest growing disciplines, is the study of genomic DNA and diversity from microorganism that cannot be cultured in a laboratory setting [22]. Metagenomics, the process of identifying species present in a body of fluid, is used in microbiome research when collecting from the cecum. By using metagenomics scientists are able to assemble a genome (abundance and identify) from individual microbes within the equine’s cecum. This is useful during bouts of colic to be able to understand and identify the population dynamics in the microbiome of the