Characterizing living ocular bacterial communities and the effects of antibiotic perturbation in house finches

In this study, we manipulated bacterial communities on bird conjunctiva with a bacteriostatic antibiotic, reducing bacterial activity while preserving viability, to identify the living and active conjunctival communities using comparisons of 16S ribosomal DNA and RNA in paired samples. DNA amplicons included many more sequence variants than RNA amplicons from the same communities, with consequent differences in diversity. While we found that changes in communities in DNA samples broadly represent shifts in the living (RNA-amplicon) communities, assessments of community function may be better described by RNA samples, reducing background noise from dead cells. We further used these data to test RNA:DNA ratios, used in other microbiological contexts, to detect shifts in bacterial activity after antibiotic disruption but were unable to detect changes in bacterial activity with this method.

Source: MicrobiologyOpen - February 5, 2024 Category: Microbiology Authors: Chava L. Weitzman, Dana M. Hawley, Bahman Rostama, Meghan May, Lisa K. Belden Tags: COMMENTARY Source Type: research