Research on the microbial diversity of the gastrointestinal of livestock is surprisingly scarce, even though it is well understood that bacteria in the gut are vital components that contribute to an animals' health and well-being. The bacterial populations that reside in the gut of animals are diverse and numerous; intestinal populations often exceed 10¹¹ CFU/gram feces 12. The majority of these bacteria are vital to the maintenance of animal's health and it is expected that even minor perturbations in these populations may cause dramatic shifts that can affect livestock productivity 345. These beneficial health effects relate to the ability of these intestinal bacterial populations to supply vital nutrients, convert metabolites and beneficially interact with host cells 678. Information on microbial diversity within the gastrointestinal tract of humans has increased in recent years as a result of 16S rDNA-based analyses 910, yet similar data on the microbiomes of livestock is lacking 1112.

The primary reasons for the lack of knowledge regarding the composition of the intestinal microbiome relates to the difficulty and expense of methods used to evaluate these populations. Traditionally culture-based methods have been used to identify and enumerate commensal members of the ruminal and intestinal flora 131415. Culture-based methods are extremely time-consuming and to date we have only been able to culture approximately 1% of the bacteria in the gut 16. Thus, culture based methods are extremely biased in their evaluation of microbial diversity, tending to overestimate the importance of bacterial species such as Escherichia coli that easily grow on an agar surface.

Molecular methodologies developed over the past decade now enable researchers to examine the diversity of the gut microflora independent of cultural methods 17. Although molecular approaches can also introduce their own forms of bias such as the ability to detect both viable and non-viable bacteria 181920 they currently provide the most powerful tools available for elucidating the diversity of animal microbiomes 4111215. The use of rapid sequencing technologies combined with molecular methods is becoming a gold standard for evaluating the microbiomes of animals 2122232425. In the present study we utilized a novel tag bacterial diversity amplification method that uses massively parallel pyrosequencing techniques to determine the diversity within the intestinal microbiota.

Recent research related to host physiology (obesity) and the gastrointestinal bacterial populations have sparked a renewed interest in understanding the gut microbiome 2627. Further studies have indicated that, in humans, intestinal microbial populations of clostridia could be responsible for the development of autism 2829. These studies gained much attention because they have correlated physiological conditions with specific microbial populations in the gut. Such studies have raised a pertinent question: is there a microbiome profile in food animals that can increase production efficiency, product quality, and/or food safety? This question has been obliquely addressed through the use of probiotics, prebiotics and competitive exclusion products which seek to establish a healthy "normal" gastrointestinal flora in animals that can improve animal performance or prevent colonization of the animal with pathogens, including zoonotic pathogens 33031.

In our present study, the bTEFAP analysis of fecal samples from 20 individual dairy cows displayed a high diversity of bacterial species and genera. Among these cows there were 274 different bacterial species detected corresponding to 142 separate genera. As several thousand sequences per sample were analyzed (minimum 1732, maximum 3224) we were able to detect populations below 0.1 %, giving a relatively deep and thorough examination of the predominant bacterial populations in these fecal samples.

It has been indicated that the microbial population of lower intestinal bacteria of cattle are dominated by strict anaerobes such as Bacteroides spp., Clostridium spp., and Bifidobacterium spp while facultative anaerobes, such as the enterobacteriaceae (e.g. E. coli), are typically reported to occur in numbers at least 100-fold lower than the strict anaerobes 32. This supports findings from the current study in which the predominant genera found in each of the samples were Clostridium, Bacteroides, Porphyromonas, Ruminococcus, Alistipes, Lachnospiraceae, Prevotella, Lachnospira, Bacteroidales, Akkermansia, and Enterococcus spp (Table 1). We can see that each of the dairy fecal samples was surprisingly consistent in that Clostridium, Porphyromonas, Bacteroides, Ruminococcus, Alistipes, Lachnospira, and Prevotella spp were highly prevalent and found in all of the cattle samples.

Clostridium spp. is a broad genus and has been described as a "trash can" genus (Steve Zinder, Cornell University, Personal communication), and are ubiquitous in the gastrointestinal tract. Clostridia can both positively and negatively influence the host animal. These effects are typically specifically associated with the individual Clostridium species involved 3334. Many have negative influences on animal health including species such as C. perfringens, C. tetani, C. botulinum, and C. difficile 353637 and can also cause significant productivity problems including reducing the protein availability in fresh forage diets 38. Conversely, some Clostridium spp. may also be beneficial and improve digestion of complex organic matter such as cellulose and even act as beneficial probiotics 3940414243. In the present study, we detected total of 37 separate species of Clostridium spp. (tentatively straminisolvens, hathewayi, leptum, fimetarium, orbiscindens, lactatifermentans were the most prevalent) and Clostridium spp. was the most common and diverse genus identified. Clostridium spp. accounted for approximately 20% of the total microbial populations and were detected in all of the cattle in this study.

Bacteroides spp. were also identified in all 20 cattle (and tentatively represented the species stercoris, denticanum, vulgates, caccae, cillulosolvens). Bacteroides are well-known intestinal bacteria that can be both beneficial and harmful 44. Bacteroides are also noted to participate in natural genetic transfer of antimicrobial resistance genes 45. Another genus that was highly prevalent in the feces of these dairy cattle was Porphyromonas spp. There was no clear identification for the most prevalent Porphyromonas species in this study though cangingivalis, and levii were two of the tentative species identified; P. levii has been associated with bovine necrotic vulvovaginitis 46 and bovine footrot 47. Little else is known about the role of this bacteria in the gut though one other study identified this bacteria as part of the intestinal community of chickens 48. Thus it appears that this bovine pathogen may have a reservoir in the feces so that it can be spread to the vulva and feet where it causes disease in cattle.

Alistipes spp (tentative finegoldii) and Prevotella spp. were previously classified as members of the genus Bacteroides 4950. Other than this original description there are only a handful of reports of Alistipes as a member of the intestinal population, including one study which identified this organism as being isolated from the ceca of turkeys 51. Prevotella spp (tentative oralis, ruminicola and albensis) is a well known genus associated with the rumen of cattle 49525354 and is associated with ruminal carbohydrate and protein fermentation. Lachnospira spp. (tentative pectinoschiza) is another genus which has been poorly characterized in environments other than the rumen and has only been occasionally detected in the feces of pigs and humans 5556. This however may be one of the first studies to show these genera as a predominant population in the lower intestinal tract of cattle.

Generic E. coli are easily cultured and ubiquitous in the feces of animals so that they are often used as a marker of fecal contamination in water supplies, however they typically comprise less than 1% of the intestinal bacterial populations 32. The colony forming unit counts of E coli in feces are typically in the 10⁴ to 10⁶ range while total microbial counts are in the 10¹⁰ to 10¹¹ bacteria per gram of feces range32. Because of this it is not surprising that E. coli were not detected in feces from three of the cows. These results are reflective of the culture-based bias inherent to studies enumerating the easily grown E. coli in vitro while major populations such as Clostridium and Bacteroides spp. are fastidious and typically require specialized anaerobic growth conditions.

Zoonotic pathogenic bacteria, such as Salmonella enterica and E. coli O157:H7 can live in the lower gut of cattle and cause human illnesses through carcass contamination, farm run-off, or crop contamination 57585960. Many live animal anti-pathogen interventions that are currently marketed or have been proposed share a mode of action that alters the microbial ecology of the gut to exclude or to push out these pathogens 6162. However, in order to effectively utilize beneficial microbial populations against foodborne pathogens we must understand the normal ecology of the gastrointestinal tract. There are an estimated 1.4 million illnesses and over 500 deaths attributed to salmonellosis in the United States annually 63. Salmonella enterica is a common inhabitant of the gastrointestinal tracts of cattle. Consequently beef and dairy products are also well known sources of human Salmonellosis 59646566. In the present study using bTEFAP, we detected Salmonella spp. in 4 of the cattle fecal samples. Similarly, Campylobacter is another major cause of foodborne illness 63 and was detected in 6 of the cow samples (Additional file 1). The zoonotic pathogen E. coli serotype O157:H7 is commonly associated with the intestinal mucosa of cattle 67. Although the bTEFAP analysis method has been shown to have the ability to differentiate this serotype within E. coli (data not shown) they were not detected or differentiated in this study. From the perspective of rapid pathogen detection, one of the most interesting observations from this study was the ability of bTEFAP to detect Salmonella spp and Campylobacter spp (Supplemental data). This finding illustrates the potential use of the bTEFAP technology as a universal bacterial diagnostic and screening tool for bacterial pathogens and indicates the potential power of bTEFAP as a screening tool in epidemiological studies in animals and humans.

Most of the existing studies seeking to evaluate microbial diversity in the intestinal tract utilize fingerprinting methodologies such as denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) 68. Fingerprinting methods typically ignore identities of the microbial populations in favor of a simple but important measure of diversity. Culture-based methods that have been used in other diversity estimates and of course over-represent the genera that can be grown easily in vitro 6970. A number of studies 11 have also evaluated powerful yet classical sequencing approaches, which involve PCR amplification, cloning and Sanger sequencing. Even accounting for potential bias of molecular methods, it is apparent that such methods are the most powerful tools currently available for evaluating the intestinal microbial population of animals. Widespread use of molecular methodologies may usher in a new age in which such diversity studies are no longer limited to a handful of laboratories with abundance of funding and labor.

In the field of animal nutrition, the microbial processes within the rumen and intestinal tract of food animals remain largely a "black box". Investigators such as Robert Hungate and Marvin Bryant characterized some ruminal and intestinal microbial populations, and related the biochemistry of these microorganisms to their roles in animal nutrition 171; however they were limited to the use of culture-based methodologies. The new method of bTEFAP is not limited to detecting organisms via culture methods, and can be used to define what constitutes a "healthy" or an "unhealthy" microbiome profile by correlating populations of bacterial species with dietary energy and protein utilization, host growth rate and efficiency, host gene expression, and host immune function 72737475. Recent research aimed at humans has underscored the role that intestinal microbial populations plays in human health and physiology. Thus fully understanding the diversity of the gut community in animals, and how these populations and communities relate to animal performance and displacement of zoonotic pathogen infections in livestock is crucial to making improvements in animal health, productivity and food safety. As this bTEFAP method matures we should have a vastly improved ability to evaluate and monitor changes in microbiomes such as those in the gastrointestinal tract of livestock.

SED helped conceived of the project, developed the methods and software, wrote first drafts of the manuscript, TRC helped conceive of the project, drafting of the manuscript, performed sample collection, RDW assisted with the development of methods, YS performed bTEFAP laboratory studies, TM was responsible for software programming, RGH managed animal aspects of the project, TSE helped with animal studies and manuscript drafts.