Abstract
BACKGROUND: Gut microbiota plays a significant role in host survival, health, and diseases; however, compared to other livestock, research on the gut microbiome of donkeys is limited. RESULTS: In this study, a total of 30 donkey samples of rectal contents from six regions, including Shigatse, Changdu, Yunnan, Xinjiang, Qinghai, and Dezhou, were collected for metagenomic sequencing. The results of the species annotation revealed that the dominant phyla were Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes, and the dominant genera were Bacteroides, unclassified_o_Clostridiales (short for Clostridiales) and unclassified_f_Lachnospiraceae (short for Lachnospiraceae). The dominant phyla, genera and key discriminators were Bacteroidetes, Clostridiales and Bacteroidetes in Tibet donkeys (Shigatse); Firmicutes, Clostridiales and Clostridiales in Tibet donkeys (Changdu); Firmicutes, Fibrobacter and Tenericutes in Qinghai donkeys; Firmicutes, Clostridiales and Negativicutes in Yunnan donkeys; Firmicutes, Fibrobacter and Fibrobacteres in Xinjiang donkeys; Firmicutes, Clostridiales and Firmicutes in Dezhou donkeys. In the functional annotation, it was mainly enriched in the glycolysis and gluconeogenesis of carbohydrate metabolism, and the abundance was the highest in Dezhou donkeys. These results combined with altitude correlation analysis demonstrated that donkeys in the Dezhou region exhibited strong glucose-conversion ability, those in the Shigatse region exhibited strong glucose metabolism and utilization ability, those in the Changdu region exhibited a strong microbial metabolic function, and those in the Xinjiang region exhibited the strongest ability to decompose cellulose and hemicellulose. CONCLUSION: According to published literature, this is the first study to construct a dataset with multi-regional donkey breeds. Our study revealed the differences in the composition and function of gut microbes in donkeys from different geographic regions and environmental settings and is valuable for donkey gut microbiome research.