Figure 2 The total bacterial composition
from eight intestinal tissue samples by 16S rRNA gene clone library. The γ-Proteobacteria dominated the total bacterial composition whereas the class Clostridia only accounted for a total of 7.1% Figure 3 Overview and diversity of the bacterial composition by clone library analysis. a) Shannon’s diversity index on phylum level divided the NEC infants in two groups. This difference could not be explained by antibiotic Aurora Kinase inhibitor treatments or the severity of the necrotizing enterocolitis b) The bacterial 16S rRNA gene composition from each of the eight necrotic intestinal tissue samples. Bacterial groups whose abundance were more than 10% in any sample are shown as bars. Enterococcus and Escherichia spp. were the most abundant in the samples with a low Shannon SBE-��-CD nmr diversity index where Ralstonia sp. was the most frequent group of species in the samples with a high Shannon index. The bacteria associated with the tissue in the individually neonates have the potential to reveal bacterial pathogens related to
the pathogenesis of NEC. In the δ-proteobacteria group Escherichia/Shigella genera dominated with a frequency of 45% out of all δ-proteobacteria and were present in 5 of medroxyprogesterone the 8 neonates with an average frequency of 24% (±36%). The Enterobacteriaceae group consisted of virtually one tag but it was similar to genera of Citrobacter, Enterobacter
(Klebsiella) and Erwinia and was Autophagy Compound Library supplier detected in 4 of the neonates. The taxonomic class Clostridia contained 10 different tags belonging to a variety of different genera (Table 4), the two most prominent being Clostridium and Anaerococcus detected in four and three neonates, respectively. A tag matching the potential pathogen Finegoldia was found twice in two different neonates. One of the specimen characterised histologically exhibiting pneumatosis intestinalis was also observed to include the genus Clostridium. The most prevalent tag belonged to Ralstonia being present in 7 out of 8 neonates, with an average of 9% (±5%). R. detusculanense, R. pickettii and R. insidiosa were revealed with more than 99% similarity (Figure 4). Figure 4 Phylogenetic relationship among Ralstonia detected in the tissue samples from the NEC infants. R. detusculanense, R. pickettii and R. insidiosa did all have more than 99% similarity with the matched Ralstonia tag from the 16S rRNA gene clone library from this study. The bacteria names and the accession numbers are shown.