Context

Pathogens can manipulate microbial interactions to ensure survival, potentially altering the functional patterns and microbiome assembly. The present study investigates how Anaplasma phagocytophilum infection affects the functional diversity, composition, and assembly of the Ixodes scapularis microbiome, with a focus on high central pathways—those characterized by elevated values in centrality metrics such as eigenvector, betweenness, and degree measures, in the microbial community.

Methods

Using previously published data from nymphs’ gut V4 region’s amplicons of bacterial 16S rRNA, we predicted the functional diversity and composition in control and A. phagocytophilum-infected ticks and inferred co-occurrence networks of taxa and ubiquitous pathways in each condition to associate the high central pathways to the microbial community assembly.

Results

Although no differences were observed concerning pathways richness and diversity, there was a significant impact on taxa and functional assembly when ubiquitous pathways in each condition were filtered. Moreover, a notable shift was observed in the microbiome’s high central functions. Specifically, pathways related to the degradation of nucleosides and nucleotides emerged as the most central functions in response to A. phagocytophilum infection. This finding suggests a reconfiguration of functional relationships within the microbial community, potentially influenced by the pathogen’s limited metabolic capacity. This limitation implies that the tick microbiome may provide additional metabolic resources to support the pathogen’s functional needs.

Conclusions

Understanding the metabolic interactions within the tick microbiome can enhance our knowledge of pathogen colonization mechanisms and uncover new disease control and prevention strategies. For example, certain pathways that were more abundant or highly central during infection may represent potential targets for microbiota-based vaccines.

中文翻译：

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剖析嗜吞噬细胞无形体感染对蜱微生物群功能网络和群落稳定性的影响

语境

病原体可以操纵微生物相互作用以确保生存，从而可能改变功能模式和微生物组组装。本研究调查了嗜吞噬细胞无形体感染如何影响肩胛硬蜱微生物组的功能多样性、组成和组装，重点关注高中心路径——这些路径的特征是特征向量、介数和程度测量等中心性指标值升高。微生物群落。

方法

利用先前发表的来自若虫肠道 V4 区细菌 16S rRNA 扩增子的数据，我们预测了对照蜱和嗜吞噬细胞蜱感染的蜱的功能多样性和组成，并推断了每种条件下类群和普遍存在的途径的共现网络，以将高微生物群落组装的中心途径。

结果

尽管在途径丰富度和多样性方面没有观察到差异，但当过滤每种条件下普遍存在的途径时，对分类群和功能组装有显着影响。此外，微生物组的高级中枢功能也发生了显着的变化。具体而言，与核苷和核苷酸降解相关的途径成为响应嗜吞噬细胞杆菌感染的最核心功能。这一发现表明微生物群落内功能关系的重新配置，可能受到病原体有限的代谢能力的影响。这种限制意味着蜱微生物组可能提供额外的代谢资源来支持病原体的功能需求。

结论

了解蜱微生物组内的代谢相互作用可以增强我们对病原体定植机制的了解，并发现新的疾病控制和预防策略。例如，在感染过程中更丰富或高度集中的某些途径可能代表基于微生物群的疫苗的潜在目标。