Helminth microbiota profiling using bacterial 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing: from sampling to data mining.

Symbiont microbial communities play important roles in animal biology and are thus considered integral components of metazoan organisms, including parasitic worms (helminths). Nevertheless, the study of helminth microbiomes has thus far been largely overlooked, and symbiotic relationships between helminths and their microbiomes have been only investigated in selected parasitic worms. Over the past decade, advances in next-generation sequencing technologies, coupled with their increased affordability, have spurred investigations of helminth-associated microbial communities aiming at enhancing current understanding of their fundamental biology and physiology, as well as of host-microbe interactions. Using the blood fluke Schistosoma mansoni as a key example of parasitic worms with complex life cycles involving multiple hosts, in this chapter we (1) provide an overview of protocols for sample collection and (2) outline an example workflow to characterize worm-associated microbial communities using high-throughput sequencing technologies and bioinformatics analyses of large-scale sequence data.