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. 2023 Aug 30;18(8):e0290776.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0290776. eCollection 2023.

Gut microbiota fingerprinting as a potential tool for tracing the geographical origin of farmed mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis)

Ane Del Rio-Lavín  1 , Sébastien Monchy  2 , Elisa Jiménez  1 , Miguel Ángel Pardo  1
Affiliations

Gut microbiota fingerprinting as a potential tool for tracing the geographical origin of farmed mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis)

Ane Del Rio-Lavín et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Identifying the provenance of seafood is critical to combat commercial fraud, enforce food safety regulations and ensure consumers' confidence. Hence, the current study aimed to determine if the bacterial composition present in the digestive gland and stomach of M. galloprovincialis mussels could be used as traceability approach to discriminate their geographic origin. The microbiota of 160 mussels collected seasonally in 2019 from five different mussel farms located in three regions in Spain (Galicia, Basque Country and Catalonia) was characterized using 16S rRNA targeted amplicon sequencing. Results showed that the bacterial community composition/fingerprint was significantly different between harvesting locations and seasons, with the effect prompted by the origin exceeding the seasonal variability. To further evaluate the stability and potential of this traceability approach, the bacterial fingerprint of 20 new individuals collected from the Basque Country in autumn 2020 were compared to the profiles obtained in 2019. Results showed that mussels collected from the Basque Country in two consecutive years cluster together, even matching the season of harvesting. The findings of this preliminary study support that this methodological approach has the potential to trace the geographical origin of unprocessed mussels and could have potential uses in seafood traceability and food safety.

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Conflict of interest statement

NO authors have competing interests.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Map showing the geographic location where the samples used for this study were collected.
Samples were collected from three different regions: Galicia [Ría de Arousa (● AGES) and Ría de Betanzos-Sada (● SGES)], Catalonia [Delta Ebro (● DEES)] and Basque Country [Mendexa (● MEES) and Mutriku (● MUES)].
Fig 2
Fig 2. Alpha diversity of M. galloprovincialis DGS microbiota.
The box plot shows mean values and standard deviation of the richness, diversity (Simpson and Shannon) and dominance (Berger-Parker) estimators for bacterial communities according to the season and harvest locations: in Galician region (● AGES, ● SGES), Catalonia region (● DEES) and Basque Country region (● MEES, ● MUES).
Fig 3
Fig 3
Hierarchical clustering dendrogram (left) and NMDS ordination (right) based on Bray-Curtis dissimilarities at OTU level of farmed mussel gut microbiota. Each symbol represents an individual M. galloprovincialis mussel; shapes of symbols correspond to different harvesting seasons—winter (✳), spring (◯), summer (●), autumn 2019 (◼), autumn 2020 (Σ)—and colours correspond to different harvest locations in Galician region (● AGES, ● SGES), Catalonia region (● DEES) and Basque Country region (● MEES, ● MUES).
Fig 4
Fig 4. Average relative abundances of bacterial communities, at family level, of mussel DGS harvested from five different farms: In Galician region (AGES, SGES), Catalonia region (DEES) and Basque Country region (MEES, MUES).
Taxa not within the 20 most abundant families were pooled together as “Other”. UC = unclassified.
Fig 5
Fig 5. Relative abundance of genus that differed significantly (Kruskall Wallis, p<0.05) between the three mussel farming regions.
Points are median values; lines represent the interquartile range and the black vertical line is the limit of detection. Pairwise comparisons were calculated by Wilcoxon rank sum test with Benjamini-Hochberg correction and significant differences are marked with asterisks (*). Taxa with a median relative abundance < 0.5% for all the locations were grouped in “Others”. Colours correspond to different harvest regions: Galician region (● AGES + SGES), Basque Country region (● MEES + MUES) and Catalonia region (● DEES).
Fig 6
Fig 6
Hierarchical clustering dendrogram (left) and NMDS ordination (right) of Bray-Curtis dissimilarity matrices based on average relative abundance of mussel gut microbiota at family level. Colours correspond to different harvest regions: Galician region (● AGES + SGES), Basque Country region (● MEES + MUES) and Catalonia region (● DEES). In the left, individuals collected a year later, in 2020, are marked with a yellow asterisk. In the right, shapes of symbols correspond to different harvesting seasons—winter (✳), spring (◯), summer (●), autumn 2019 (◼), autumn 2020 (Σ).
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Grants and funding

Our study was carried out thanks to the financial support of the SEA-TRACES (EAPA_87/2016) INTERREG Atlantic Area EU funded project and the SEAFOOD-ID Project (PID2020-118012RB-C22) funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by the European Union. Ane del Rio Lavín is the recipient of a PhD grant from the Education Department of the Basque Government.