An analysis of the cecum microbiome of three breeds of the guinea pig: Andina, Inti, and Peru.

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the effect of host genetics on the structure and composition of the cecum microbiota of three breeds of guinea pigs Andina, Inti, and Peru. Fifteen guinea pigs were distributed into three groups according to their breed Andina (5), Inti (5), and Peru (5). We discovered that four main phyla were shared between the three breeds Bacteroidota, Firmicutes, Spirochaetota, and Synergistota. Although there were no significant differences in the alpha and beta diversity analysis, we found that the Linear discriminant analysis effect size and the heat tree analysis showed significant differences between the abundance of several taxa present in the cecum microbiome of the three breeds. These results suggest that host genetics could be a factor in the structure and composition of the guinea pig cecum microbiome. In addition, we found unique genera for each breed that have fermentation capacity and, therefore can be analyzed in further studies to determine if there is a functional relationship between them and the breed and its industrial profile.