Actinobacterial Flora in Feces of Healthy Cottontail Rabbits (Sylvilagus auduboni).

Most known antibiotics from bacteria are produced by Actinobacteria. However, little is known about the community structure and diversity of fecal actinobacteria from rabbit feces. To investigate the actinobacterial community structure in rabbit feces, different actinobacterial-specific primer sets were used to amplify the overlap regions of 16S rRNA genes from the same DNA. At the genus level, 12 actinobacterial genera were detected by the L and S libraries. Arthrobacter, Brachybacterium, Dietzia, Leucobacter, Microbacterium, Promicromonospora and Rhodococcus were detected by L and S libraries. The Nocardioides, Streptomyces and Williamsia were only detected by L library; the Oerskovia and Brevibacterium were only detected by S library. The results indicated that rabbit feces contain diverse nonpathogenic actinobacterial taxa and PCR primer sets could underestimate the actinobacterial diversity besides the DNA extract efficiency.