Metagenomic Characterization of Culture-Negative Bovine Clinical Mastitis Samples to Understand Disease Etiology. bovine metagenome

Inflammation and infection of bovine mammary glands, commonly known as mastitis, imposes significant losses each year in the dairy industry worldwide. While several bacterial species have been identified as causing mastitis, many clinical mastitis cases remain culture negative, even using enrichment protocols to improve bacterial growth. To understand the basis for this increasingly common phenomenon, culture independent, metagenomic techniques were utilized to compare the microbial community structure of culture negative clinical mastitis samples to those obtained from non-mastitic quarters from the same animals. Milk samples from infected and uninfected quarters of cows with clinical mastitis were collected. Samples that tested negative in routine culture tests were selected for 16S rRNA sequencing.