VALENCIA, 16 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
A study led by the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) has identified new bacteria that influence the ability of animals to adapt to environmental changes.
There are animals that adapt better to environmental changes. And the key to this lies in your DNA and the microbiome. This study – led by a team from the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), belonging to the Institute of Animal Science and Technology (ICTA) – has confirmed how the immune system is influenced differently depending on the bacterial composition of each animal.
The results of the work, in which researchers from the Miguel Hernández University (UMH) and the University of Lleida (UdL) have also participated, have been published in the magazine ‘Microbiome’, the Valencian university reports in a statement.
The research is the first in the field of animal genetic improvement that has identified bacteria in the intestine that could be affecting the animals’ ability to adapt to environmental changes, that is, affecting their resilience. Furthermore, these bacteria, in turn, could be regulated by the genes of these animals. In this way, the results obtained by the UPV and UMH team could contribute to improving animal welfare and the sustainability of the livestock sector.
“The immune system is key to responding to environmental threats, such as infection by external pathogens. The identification we have achieved of these bacterial species highlights the importance of the immune system in regulating resilience. We have identified genes and species that contribute to better health of the individual, therefore, to a greater capacity for adaptation,” explains Cristina Casto, ICTA researcher and co-author of the study.
To reach these conclusions, the team from the UPV, UMH and UdL compared the microbial composition of two lines of rabbits in the same environment, with a common genetic origin but divergently selected. The lines were selected divergently in the UMH for 13 generations, taking into account a specific phenotype: the environmental variance of litter size.
The importance of this phenotype lies in its relationship with the animal’s ability to counteract or face environmental changes, without affecting its production or recovering it in an optimal and rapid way. That is, it has been observed that animals with less environmental variance in their litter size are more resilient animals.
Using different bioinformatics tools, the UPV team analyzed a representation of animals from both rabbit populations. Through various statistical methodologies, they identified several groups of bacteria and bacterial genes that allowed them to classify and predict which animal belonged to each population with a reliability of over 90%.
In total, he identified 35 species of bacteria. Although the effect caused by many of them is confusing or unknown, some of those identified regulate immune activity and could be affecting the health status of rabbits and therefore their resilience.
“Among the groups of bacteria, species beneficial to the health of the individual were observed in the most resilient animals, such as Limosilactobacillus fermentum and Odoribacter splanchnicus, while the most harmful species were detected with greater abundance in the least resilient line (Eggerthella sp and Acetatifactor muris)”, explains Cristina Casto. The study has also made it possible to identify microbial pathway genes that could contribute to regulating the immune system.
“All these results point to the fact that the immune system is influenced differently by the bacterial composition of each animal population. This work opens the door for the livestock sector to be able to apply this knowledge to study the composition of bacteria in the future. of bacteria in their animals and select those most suitable to modulate resilience. A selection could be carried out based on the microbiome. And, in addition, the benefits of developing probiotics based on these bacterial species could be studied and, in this way, modify the animal resilience in a simpler, cheaper and applicable on a large scale way,” concludes Noelia Ibáñez, from the ICTA-UPV.
