The next talk in the session of Oxford Nanopore Technologies at ASM Microbe 2024. Anna Cusco, a postdoctoral researcher from Fudan University. Cusco spoke about pet health and dog microbiomes. Microbiome analysis can be performed with amplicons or whole genome information. They targeted full-length 16S sequencing to obtain genus and species-level information. One concern is that healthy dogs may harbor methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus pseudointermedius, a common inhabitant of canine microbiomes. The team is working on rapid clinical metagenomics assays for canine skin infections. Cusco retrieved highly contiguous and high-quality MAGs. They have collected fecal samples from over fifty dogs in Shanghai, obtaining 20 Gbases of ONT and short read data! Most MAGs were high quality. The team is also applying this approach to urban park soils. These microbiomes are more complex. Cusco ended by thanking the dozens of (canine) participants.
