Age-related analysis of the gut microbiome in a purebred dog colony

Dogs are model animals that can be used to study the gut microbiome. Although the gut microbiome is assumed to be closely related to aging, information pertaining to this relationship in dogs is limited. Here, we examined the association between the canine gut microbiome and age via a bacterial 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequence analysis in a colony of 43 Japanese purebred Shiba Inu dogs. We found that microbial diversity tended to decrease with aging. A differential abundance analysis showed an association of a single specific microbe with aging. The age-related coabundance network analysis showed that two microbial network modules were positively and negatively associated with aging, respectively. These results suggest that the dog gut microbiome is likely to vary with aging.

狗是可用于研究肠道微生物组的模式动物。尽管肠道微生物组被认为与衰老密切相关，但有关狗体内这种关系的信息有限。在此，我们通过对43只日本纯种柴犬群体进行细菌16S rRNA基因扩增子序列分析，研究了犬肠道微生物组与年龄之间的关联。我们发现微生物多样性有随年龄增长而降低的趋势。差异丰度分析表明有一种特定的微生物与衰老有关。与年龄相关的共丰度网络分析显示，两个微生物网络模块分别与衰老呈正相关和负相关。这些结果表明，狗的肠道微生物组可能随年龄增长而变化。