One-hundred and three Unites States Suffolk sheep were inoculated orally with a scrapie agent preparation and monitored for clinical disease and histopathological lesions characteristic of scrapie. A retrospective study of the polymorphisms at codon 171 of the prion protein (PrP) gene was performed on these sheep. All 63 sheep that developed scrapie during the observation period were homozygous for the glutamine 171 (171-QQ) PrP allele. Twelve 171-QQ sheep failed to develop disease. All 5 sheep homozygous for arginine (171-RR) and all 23 heterozygous (171-QR) sheep remained free of scrapie.

The objective of this study was to characterize the normal microbiome of healthy canine vagina and endometrium and to determine the effect of the stage of estrous, on the resident microbiome. Cranial vaginal swabs and uterine biopsy samples were collected from twenty-five bitches in five different stages of estrous at elective ovariohysterectomy (OVH). Over 4 million reads of the V4 region of 16S rDNA gene were obtained and used for further analyses. A total of 317 genera belonging to 24 known phyla were identified. The endometrium was higher in bacterial diversity while the vagina was higher in richness. Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes were the most abundant phyla observed across all samples. Hydrotalea, Ralstonia, and Fusobacterium accounted for nearly 60% of the OTUs identified in the vagina while organisms identified in the endometrium were more evenly distributed. Pseudomonas, Staphylococcus, and Corynebacterium were the prominent genera in the endometrium. The microbiome of the endometrium was distinctly different from that of the vagina. There was large animal-to-animal variation. Other than the vaginal microbiome of bitches in estrus (i.e. in heat), there were no distinct clustering of the organisms based on the stage of estrous. These findings establish the presence of a resident microbiome of the endometrium throughout all stages of estrous cycle.