Author
Listed:
- Eunice N. Ndegwa
- Ako Agyemang
Abstract
Bifidobacterium spp. are among bacteria being developed as probiotics for farm animals. Understanding diversity of the normal gut inhabitants is a prerequisite to developing species-specific probiotics strains that are likely to establish in the host. For many farm animals including goats, the normal gut Bifidobacterium inhabitants have not been characterized including age based differences. The objective of this exploratory study was to gain preliminary understanding of abundance and diversity of Bifidobacterium species in goats of different ages. Molecular methods have given scientists fast methods for exploratory insights into previously uncharacterized microbiomes. Consequently, in this study we utilized molecular assays using genus and species specific primers to characterize Bifidobacterium in pastured goats. Although Bifidobacterium were detected in all ages, younger animals had higher counts than older goats. In goats below six months of age, B. angulatum, B. dentium, B. gallicum, B. animalis sub animalis, B. longum and B. catenulatum were detected. In goats six months and older, B. dentium and B. gallicum were predominant. In some goats however, the specific strains could not be identified with the currently available primers indicating there are goat specific unique strains that are yet to be characterized. Further research to characterize and isolate Bifidobacterium in goats are needed for future probiotic applications. In conclusion, Bifidobacterium spp. were common in all age groups of pastured goats but more abundant in pre-weaned goats compared to goats over six months. In addition age related differences in the diversity of Bifidobacterium spp. in goats were reported.
Suggested Citation
Eunice N. Ndegwa & Ako Agyemang, 2024.
"Molecular Detection of Age-Related Abundance and Diversity of Bifidobacterium spp. in Pastured Goats,"
Journal of Agricultural Science, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 14(4), pages 1-51, April.
Handle:
RePEc:ibn:jasjnl:v:14:y:2024:i:4:p:51
Download full text from publisher
More about this item
JEL classification:
- R00 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General - - - General
- Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General
Statistics
Access and download statistics
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ibn:jasjnl:v:14:y:2024:i:4:p:51. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Canadian Center of Science and Education (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cepflch.html .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.