Prior to further processing, the raw read data were subjected to the MG-RAST v.3.0 online server quality control pipeline [19] to remove duplicate and low selleck screening library quality reads (Table S1). The filtering step removed 22.1% of reads in the sample. The unique sequence reads that passed the QC filtering step were then subjected to further analysis focusing on biodiversity and functional annotation. All reads were deposited in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and can be accessed in the Short Read Archive (SRA) under the accession number SRX160437. Phylogenetic Analysis of Pygmy Loris Fecal Bacteria, Eukaryota, Archaea, and Viruses The overview of the phylogenetic computations provided 95.54% bacteria, 3.8% eukaryota, 0.39% archaea, and 0.12% viruses.

In the pygmy loris intestinal metagenome, Bacteroidetes was the most predominant phylum (~41%), followed by Proteobacteria (~30%), Actinobacteria (~11%), and Firmicutes (~9%) (Figure 1). Compared with the previous 16S rRNA gene-based data [7], significantly lower percentages of Firmicutes and higher percentages of Bacteroidetes in the pygmy loris intestinal metagenome were observed. This discrepancy may have been caused by the biases associated with the primers, PCR reaction conditions, or selection of clones [25]. Figure 1 Bacterial phylum profiles of the pygmy loris microbiome. The relative paucity of the Firmicutes sequences is in conflict with data from the studies of humans [1], [11], [12], [26] and other higher primates [2], [3], [4], [6], [8], [9].

The reasons for the variation are difficult to identify because of the biases involved in the fecal lysis and DNA extraction methods [27]; inter-individual variability may also contribute to this divergence. Given that 70% of the phylotypes existing in the human gastro-intestinal microbiome are subject-specific and no phylotype is present at more than 0.5% abundance in all subjects [13], the gastro-intestinal microbiota of each individual has been shown to consist of a subject specific complement of hundreds of genera and thousands of species. As a prosimian, the pygmy loris is less like a primate than others with the same intestinal microbiome composition. However, this claim needs to be proved by further research on fecal samples of more pygmy loris and prosimians.

Within Dacomitinib the Bacteroidetes group, Bacteroidales were the most predominant, among which Bacteroides, Prevotella, and Parabacteroides were consistently overrepresented (Table S2). Organisms belonging to the genus Bacteroides represent one of the most abundant microbial taxa in human intestinal microbiota [11], [28]. Bacteroides fragilis comprises about 5.8% of the reads analyzed; therefore, it is considered the predominant species in the pygmy loris metagenome. B. fragilis is a ubiquitous Gram-negative anaerobic bacterium that inhabits the lower GI tract of most mammals [1].