Vol. 11, Special Issue 10 (2022)

Author(s):
Amitoz Kaur, Gurdeep Singh, Anil Taku, Altaf Bhatt and Rajni Sharma

Abstract:
Sheep is an important species of livestock that has an immense potential to provide livelihood to a large proportion of small and marginal landless farmers, but respiratory diseases are one of the major hurdles in development of this sector. This study was conducted to explore the microbial diversity respiratory tract of apparently healthy sheep through metagenomic approach using Illumina Hiseq platform. The analysis revealed a total of 11, 142, 309 reads with sequence length of 250 bp having GC content of 46.21%. On the basis of comparative taxonomic abundance 37154 contigs belonged to Phylum Proteobacteria followed by Chordata. Analysis revealed majority sequences were belonging to bacteria and only 3% belonged to Viruses. The study revealed presence of a rich and very diverse microbial flora in the lower respiratory tract of sheep and is probably the first comprehensive study on sheep respiratory tract in India that can serve as a benchmark for further research in respiratory diseases of sheep.