Bacteriocin production augments niche competition by enterococci in the mammalian GI tract.. mouse gut metagenome

E. faecalis harboring pPD1 plasmid (EF+pPD1) directly kills competing enterococci in the gut, Bac-21 might also alter physical or nutritional niches by killing other competing bacterial species. To investigate this, 16S DNA high throughput pyrosequencing20 was used to assess the gut community composition of colonized mice. We found no significant differences in composition between the ceca of control mice and those colonized by EFr indicating that colonization of mice with laboratory strains of EF does not substantially alter intestinal microbial ecology. The cecal composition of EFr and EFr+pPD1 were significantly different from each other (p = 0.007) and clustered separately.