The Urine Microbiome of Livestock and Wildlife as Source of Zoonotic Bacteria in Tanzania
Jo Halliday, Kathryn Allan, Sarah Cleaveland, Ruth Zadoks & Manikhandan Mudaliar
The key question that this project is addressing is: What potentially zoonotic bacteria are present in the urine microbiome of cattle, sheep, goats and rodents in northern Tanzania?
Fever is one of the most common syndromes prompting healthcare seeking in sub-Saharan Africa. It is increasingly clear that zoonotic bacterial pathogens such as Leptospira spp, Brucella spp and Coxiella burnetii are important contributors to this public health problem. Contact between humans and urine from livestock or wildlife is a well-described route of infection with these pathogens. The key question addressed through this project is “What potentially zoonotic bacteria are present in the urine microbiome of cattle, sheep, goats and rodents in northern Tanzania?” The proposed metagenomics approaches will enable detection and sequencing of pathogens that are known to be present in the study populations whilst also enabling exploration of the full range of other potentially zoonotic bacteria shed by these species. These data are ultimately important to understand the maintenance and transmission processes of individual pathogens and to design targeted control programmes for prevention of human infection.