Ocular Microbiome in a Group of Clinically Healthy Horses

Abstract

The ocular microbiome in horses is poorly described compared to other species, and most of the information available in the literature is based on traditional techniques, which has limited the depth of the knowledge on the subject. The objective of this study was to characterize and predict the metabolic pathways of the ocular microbiome of a group of healthy horses. Conjunctival swabs were obtained from both eyes of 14 horses, and DNA extraction was performed from the swabs, followed by next generation sequencing and bioinformatics analyses employing DADA2 and PICRUSt2. A total of 17 phyla were identified, of which <i>Pseudomonadota</i> (<i>Proteobacteria</i>) was the most abundant (59.88%), followed by <i>Actinomycetota</i> (<i>Actinobacteria</i>) (22.44%) and <i>Bacteroidota</i> (<i>Bacteroidetes</i>) (16.39%), totaling an average of 98.72% of the communities. Similarly, of the 278 genera identified, <i>Massilia</i>, <i>Pedobacter</i>, <i>Pseudomonas</i>, <i>Sphingomonas</i>, <i>Suttonella</i> and <i>Verticia</i> were present in more than 5% of the samples analyzed. Both <i>Actinobacteria</i> and <i>Bacteroides</i> showed great heterogeneity within the samples. The most abundant inferred metabolic functions were related to vital functions for bacteria such as aerobic respiration, amino acid, and lipid biosynthesis.