Abstract
Biochar as additive has been shown positive effect in animal production, which may be linked to the role of gastrointestinal microbial modulation. This study aimed to assess the effects of biochar on the gut microbial communities in terms of their structure and diversity. Illumina high-throughput technology was utilized to evaluate the cecal microbial community in Wistar rats received oral rice straw biochar (RSB) at 1120 mg/kg of body weight for 5 weeks. RSB improved the gut mucosal structure and epithelial integrity. More importantly, principal coordinate analysis of UniFrac distances based on a 97% operational taxonomic unit composition and abundance indicated that the bacterial community was ameliorated after RSB addition (P < 0.05). Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes were found to be the prevalent phyla accounting for approximately 90% of the sequences and their ratio of relative abundance was increased by RSB addition (P < 0.05). Improved bacterial proportion of unclassified Lachnospiraceae (P < 0.001), Oscillibacter (P = 0.02), and Clostridium IV (P = 0.02) and XIVa (P = 0.02) as well as decreased abundances of Prevotella (P < 0.001) and Bacteroides (P = 0.03) were also detected at genus level following RSB treatment. These results revealed that RSB altered and improved the cecal microbial community, which may contribute to the affected growth and gut status in rats.
Highlights
The animal gut is the natural habitat for a large and dynamic bacterial community
rice straw biochar (RSB) treatment resulted in a significant increase in rat body weight (BW) at the end of weeks 4 and 5 (P < 0.05) (Fig. 1)
The present study demonstrated that oral RSB positively improved the morphological appearance of gut mucosa in rats using hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining
Summary
The animal gut is the natural habitat for a large and dynamic bacterial community. The relevance and effects of the endogenous microflora on host physiology and pathology have been well documented[1] from nutritional status to behavior and stress response, that affect health status[2,3]. Biochar is a novel type of carbonaceous adsorbent in terms of the prepared materials from agricultural wastes such as crop straw, husks, shell, and others, and its preparation by thermal degradation of organic matters in environments where oxygen is absent or limited conditions. This production engineering make biochar has larger surface area and macropores due to the loss of volatiles during pyrolysis to provide more spacious sites for microorganisms to multiply[13]. We focused on determining the impact of RSB on the gastrointestinal microbial community by illumina high-throughput technology to preliminarily understand the reason that affected growth and intestinal status by biochar
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