Comparison of conventional and molecular techniques to investigate the intestinal microflora of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss)

The concept of the use of probiotic organisms or prebiotic compounds to modify the fish gut microflora is becoming a popular topic for investigation. A major flaw in many such studies is a failure to consider fully the nature of the established microflora, which is to be modified pre-, or probiotically. Since it is widely accepted that a large proportion of bacteria are non-culturable, the use of conventional bacteriological (culture) techniques alone to investigate fish intestinal microflora may be expected to bias results. We report a study designed to investigate the normal intestinal microflora of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) using both conventional bacteriological and molecular methods.Over an 18 month period, the intestinal microflora of a single population of laboratory-raised rainbow trout was investigated. Bacteria isolated using bacteriological techniques were identified using the BiOLOG system and 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Dominant bacteria consistently were Aeromonas sp. and Carnobacterium piscicola, demonstrating that the microflora is stable in fish kept in defined conditions. Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP) and 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis was used to investigate anaerobic and non-culturable bacteria. An obligate anaerobe, Clostridium gasigenes, was shown to be among the dominating intestinal microflora.