Figure 1 | Scientific Reports

Figure 1

From: Rickettsia helvetica infection is associated with microbiome modulation in Ixodes ricinus collected from humans in Serbia

Figure 1

Experimental design. Ticks used in this study were collected from humans in Serbia, and the presence of tick-borne pathogens was assessed by microfluidic PCR4. Ticks were either infected with R. helvetica, or uninfected by major tick-borne pathogens (referred hereafter as ‘pathogen-free’). In this study, the R. helvetica-infected and pathogen-free DNA samples were used for 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing and microbiome analysis. Bacterial composition and abundance were analyzed. The alpha-, beta-diversity and beta-dispersion of the two datasets were compared, and co-occurrence networks were inferred to assess the structure of the microbial communities. Functional gene prediction in R. helvetica-infected and pathogen-free ticks was performed using PICRUSt2 and explored for possible impact of R. helvetica infection on metabolic traits of the tick microbiome.

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