The diverse collections of microorganisms associated with humans and other animals, collectively referred to as their "microbiome," are critical for host health, but the mechanisms that govern their assembly are poorly understood. This has made it difficult to identify consistent host factors that explain variation in microbiomes across hosts, despite large-scale sampling efforts. While ecological theory predicts that the movement, or dispersal, of individuals can have profound and predictable consequences on community assembly, its role in the assembly of animal-associated microbiomes remains underexplored. Here, we show that dispersal of microorganisms among hosts can contribute substantially to microbiome variation, and is able to overwhelm the effects of individual host factors, in an experimental test of ecological theory. We manipulated dispersal among wild-type and immune-deficient knockout zebrafish and observed that interhost dispersal had a large effect on the diversity and composition of intestinal microbiomes. Interhost dispersal was strong enough to overwhelm the effects of host factors, largely eliminating differences between wild-type and immune-deficient hosts, regardless of whether dispersal occurred within or between genotypes, suggesting dispersal can independently alter the ecology of microbiomes. Our observations are consistent with a predictive model that assumes metacommunity dynamics and are likely mediated by dispersal-related microbial traits. These results illustrate the importance of microbial dispersal to animal microbiomes and motivate its integration into the study of host-microbe systems.

Animal hosts must co-exist with beneficial microbes while simultaneously being able to mount rapid, non-specific, innate immune responses to pathogenic microbes. How this balance is achieved is not fully understood, and disruption of this relationship can lead to disease. Excessive inflammatory responses to resident microbes are characteristic of certain gastrointestinal pathologies such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The immune dysregulation of IBD has complex genetic underpinnings that cannot be fully recapitulated with single-gene-knockout models. A deeper understanding of the genetic regulation of innate immune responses to resident microbes requires the ability to measure immune responses in the presence and absence of the microbiota using vertebrate models with complex genetic variation. Here, we describe a new gnotobiotic vertebrate model to explore the natural genetic variation that contributes to differences in innate immune responses to microbiota. Threespine stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus, has been used to study the developmental genetics of complex traits during the repeated evolution from ancestral oceanic to derived freshwater forms. We established methods to rear germ-free stickleback larvae and gnotobiotic animals monoassociated with single bacterial isolates. We characterized the innate immune response of these fish to resident gut microbes by quantifying the neutrophil cells in conventionally reared monoassociated or germ-free stickleback from both oceanic and freshwater populations grown in a common intermediate salinity environment. We found that oceanic and freshwater fish in the wild and in the laboratory share many intestinal microbial community members. However, oceanic fish mount a strong immune response to residential microbiota, whereas freshwater fish frequently do not. A strong innate immune response was uniformly observed across oceanic families, but this response varied among families of freshwater fish. The gnotobiotic stickleback model that we have developed therefore provides a platform for future studies mapping the natural genetic basis of the variation in immune response to microbes.

Background: At times of unfavorable cervix induction of labor with cervical ripening agents were necessary. The present study was done to compare the efficacy and outcome of vaginal misoprostol and Foleys catheter in pregnant women for induction of labor.Methods: This randomized clinical trial was performed on 10o pregnant women during a time period of December 2014 to November 2016. These women were randomly divided into two groups: Misoprostol (50 patients) and Foley catheter (50 patients). For the first group, 25 mcg vaginal misoprostol was administered every 4 h up to maximum of 3 doses for a period of 12 hours. For the second group, Foley catheter 18 F, was placed through the internal os of the cervix. Data was analyzed using SPSS software 20. p <0.05 was considered statistically significant.Results: The mean age of the patients in Group 1 was 24.72±2.93 years and Group 2 was 24.12±2.88 years. Pre-induction & post-induction modified Bishop score was significantly higher in Group 1 (Misoprostol) as compared to Group 2 (Foley's catheter) in primigravida and multigravida patients. The difference in the birth weight and Apgar score at 1 min and 5 min between the two groups was statistically not significant (p>0.05). The rate of vaginal delivery was significantly more in Misoprostol group as compared to Foley’s catheter group (p<0.05). The caesarean section rate was more in Foley’s catheter group as compared to Misoprostol group and the results were statistically significant (p<0.05).Conclusions: It was concluded that misoprostol decrease the delivery time and increases the vaginal delivery compared to Foleys catheter.

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