Diversity and functional prediction of fungal communities in different segments of Mongolian horse gastrointestinal tracts

Abstract

Abstract Background: Anaerobic fungi are effective fiber degrading microorganisms in the digestive tract of horses, but thus far, our understanding of their diversity and community structure is limited, especially the distribution of different parts of the gastrointestinal tract is practicallyt blank. Results: For the first time, high-throughput sequencing technology was used to analyze and predict the fungal microbial diversity in the contents of different parts of gastrointestinal tract of Mongolian horse. The results showed that the richness and diversity of fungi in the hindgut of Mongolian horses were much higher than those in the foregut. The foregut was dominated by Basidiomycota and Ascomycota, while the hindgut was dominated by Neocallimastigomycota and Basidiomycota. At the genus level, the relative abundance of a large number of pathogenic fungi (Cryptococcus, Cladosporium, Alternaria, Sarocladium and Fusarium) in the foregut was significantly higher than that in the posterior gut (P <0.01 or P <0.05), indicating that Mongolian horses had strong disease resistance. The prediction of fungal function also showed that there were significant differences in the fungal flora between the foregut and the hindgut. The fungi in the foregut of Mongolian horses are mainly pathologically nutritive and contain a large number of animal and plant pathogens, especially in the small intestine (jejunum and ileum), indicating that the foregut may be the most important immune site in the digestive system of Mongolian horses, which well explains the high disease resistance of Mongolian horses. The Unassigned functional group in the posterior gut is significantly higher than that in the anterior gut, indicating that the functions of fungal groups in the posterior gut have not been fully explored and further study is needed in the future. Conclusions: The study of the fungal diversity of the Mongolian horse health digestive system provides important basic data, can be used for the Mongolian horse health assessment, and for further study on the horse of the digestive system, horse disease resistance, and even the development of microbial supplements provide clues.