Intestinal Microbial Community Profiles of a Newborn Preterm Infant Using Pyrosequencing Analysis: Pilot Study

ABSTRACT

DNA pyrosequencing, one of the advanced methods for DNA sequencing, has been employed for phylogenetic analysis of bacterial communities using the conserved 16S rRNA gene. We performed a pilot study on a mother-neonate pair utilizing the DNA pyrosequencing assays to investigate the diversity of microbial communities in maternal amniotic fluid (AF), vagina, and rectum and newborn gastric fluid (GF) and stool. Phylum level analysis revealed that bacterial community was dominated by Firmicutes (63.2%) in maternal feces, and Actinobacteria (84.9%) in maternal vaginal swab. The bacterial communities in both the AF and GF were dominated by Proteobacteria (67.8%). Interestingly, the bacterial community in the newborn's meconium was quite similar to that in the AF. However, the composition of the bacterial community in newborn's feces was different on day 14 and dominated by Firmicutes (91.1%). Genus-level analysis revealed that the bacterial community in maternal feces was dominated by Anaerococcus (19.5%) and Prevotella (18.7%), whereas that in the maternal vaginal swab was dominated by Atopobium (83.6%). The bacterial communities in both the AF and GF were dominated by Sphingomonas (38.5%). The bacterial community in the newborn's meconium was quite similar to that in the AF, which was dominated by Sphingomonas (45.2%). However, the composition of bacterial community in the newborn's feces on day 14 was relatively different. Future studies with a large number of infants are needed to determine the factors involved in the changing profile of newborn's fecal bacterial communities.