JERUSALEM, Feb. 26 (Xinhua) -- Israeli researchers have discovered how microbial communities of bacteria work in the fish's gut, Ben-Gurion University (BGU) in southern Israel reported Wednesday.
The research findings can lead to the engineering of these bacterial communities, thus optimizing the fish's survivability and growth and improving its quality, the researchers said.
The research, conducted by researchers from BGU and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI) and published in the journal Nature Microbiology, may help deal with the ongoing shortage of ocean edible fish supply.
Keeping fish healthy and reproducing is essential to meet the growing demand, and microbial communities play important roles in their host's lives.
In the current study, the Israeli team discovered how a fish's core microbiome operates by identifying the microbial gut communities and how they coexist across several fish species.
The team discovered that there are some microbial communities that exist across fish species and across various parts of the gut.
They found that these species are more genetically variable when compared to other members of the microbiome, a feature that enables them to cope with the variety of hosts and gut conditions. Moreover, surprisingly, these microbes tend to facilitate each other.
"Since domesticated fish will represent much of the world's supply in another ten years, such optimization is critical to ensuring continued fish supply," the researchers concluded.
