Host-associated microbes form an important component of immunity that protect against infection by pathogens. Treating wild individuals with these protective microbes, known as probiotics, can reduce rates of infection and disease in both wild and captive settings. However, the utility of probiotics for tackling wildlife disease requires that they offer consistent protection across the broad genomic variation of the pathogen that hosts can encounter in natural settings. Here we develop multi-isolate probiotic consortia with the aim of effecting broad-spectrum inhibition of growth of the lethal amphibian pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) when tested against nine Bd isolates from two distinct lineages. Though we achieved strong growth inhibition between 70 and 100% for seven Bd isolates, two isolates appeared consistently resistant to inhibition, irrespective of probiotic strategy employed. We found no evidence that genomic relatedness of the chytrid predicted similarity of inhibition scores, nor that increasing the genetic diversity of the bacterial consortia could offer stronger inhibition of pathogen growth, even for the two resistant isolates. Our findings have important consequences for the application of probiotics to mitigate wildlife diseases in the face of extensive pathogen genomic variation.

中文翻译：

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设计具有针对野生生物病原体的广谱活性的益生菌疗法。

宿主相关微生物构成免疫力的重要组成部分，可保护其免受病原体感染。用被称为益生菌的这些保护性微生物治疗野生个体，可以降低野生环境和圈养环境的感染率和疾病发生率。然而，益生菌对付野生动物疾病的实用性要求它们为宿主在自然环境中可能遇到的病原体的广泛基因组变异提供一致的保护。在这里，我们针对针对来自两个不同谱系的九种Bd分离株进行测试，以实现广谱抑制致死性两栖病原体Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis（Bd）生长的目的，开发了多分离益生菌联合体。尽管我们对7种Bd分离物实现了70％至100％的强生长抑制，不论采用何种益生菌策略，两种分离株均表现出对抑制的持续耐药性。我们没有找到证据证明壶菌的基因组相关性可以预测抑制分数的相似性，也没有发现增加细菌聚生体的遗传多样性可以对病原体的生长提供更强的抑制作用，即使对于两个耐药菌株也是如此。面对广泛的病原体基因组变异，我们的发现对应用益生菌缓解野生动物疾病具有重要意义。