Bovine milk microbiome characterisation through long-read sequencing (ONT) 16S metabarcoding

Mastitis is a major disease of dairy cattle whose aetiological agent often remains unidentified by microbiological culture. To test whether shifts in the bovine milk microbiota are key to mastitis development, full-length 16S-metabarcoding using Oxford Nanopore Technologies was used to characterise the microbial population of milk from healthy and diseased udder of cows classified into five groups based on their mastitis history and parity.