Abstract
BackgroundThe mammalian intestinal tract harbors diverse and dynamic microbial communities that play pivotal roles in host health, metabolism, immunity, and development. Average daily gain (ADG) is an important growth trait in meat rabbit industry. The effects of gut microbiota on ADG in meat rabbits are still unknown.ResultsIn this study, we investigated the dynamic distribution of gut microbiota in commercial Ira rabbits from weaning to finishing and uncover the relationship between the microbiota and average daily gain (ADG) via 16S rRNA gene sequencing. The results indicated that the richness and diversity of gut microbiota significantly increased with age. Gut microbial structure was less variable among finishing rabbits than among weaning rabbits. The relative abundances of the dominant phyla Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Verrucomicrobia and Cyanobacteria, and the 15 predominant genera significantly varied with age. Metagenomic prediction analysis showed that both KOs and KEGG pathways related to the metabolism of monosaccharides and vitamins were enriched in the weaning rabbits, while those related to the metabolism of amino acids and polysaccharides were more abundant in the finishing rabbits. We identified 34 OTUs, 125 KOs, and 25 KEGG pathways that were significantly associated with ADG. OTUs annotation suggested that butyrate producing bacteria belong to the family Ruminococcaceae and Bacteroidales_S24-7_group were positively associated with ADG. Conversely, Eubacterium_coprostanoligenes_group, Christensenellaceae_R-7_group, and opportunistic pathogens were negatively associated with ADG. Both KOs and KEGG pathways correlated with the metabolism of vitamins, basic amino acids, and short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) showed positive correlations with ADG, while those correlated with aromatic amino acids metabolism and immune response exhibited negative correlations with ADG. In addition, our results suggested that 10.42% of the variation in weaning weight could be explained by the gut microbiome.ConclusionsOur findings give a glimpse into the dynamic shifts in gut microbiota of meat rabbits and provide a theoretical basis for gut microbiota modulation to improve ADG in the meat rabbit industry.
Highlights
The mammalian intestinal tract harbors diverse and dynamic microbial communities that play pivotal roles in host health, metabolism, immunity, and development
We investigated the dynamic distribution of gut microbiota in commercial Ira rabbits from weaning to finishing via high-throughput 16S 16S ribosomal ribonucleic acid (rRNA) gene sequencing
A total of 2072 Operational taxonomic unit (OTU) were identified from all samples, with 974 of those defined as core OTUs due to their existence in both weaning and finishing samples (Additional file 1: Fig. S1a)
Summary
The mammalian intestinal tract harbors diverse and dynamic microbial communities that play pivotal roles in host health, metabolism, immunity, and development. Average daily gain (ADG) is an important growth trait in meat rabbit industry. The effects of gut microbiota on ADG in meat rabbits are still unknown. The mammalian intestinal tract harbors large and diverse microbial communities. Fang et al BMC Microbiology (2020) 20:116 performance of food producing animals [4, 5]. Warne et al indicated that manipulation of gut microbiota during critical developmental windows could affect production performance in animals [7]. It is important to understand the dynamic distribution of gut microbiota in food producing animals at different growth stages and to recognize how microbial taxa and functions affect production performance
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