Abstract
Weaning is stressful for piglets involving nutritional, physiological, and psychological challenges, leading to an increase in the secretion of cortisol, changes in gut microbiome and metabolites, whereas the underlying relationships remain unclear. To elucidate this, 14 Meishan female piglets were divided into the weaning group and the suckling group at the age of 21 days paired by litter and body weight. After 48 h of experiment, weaned piglets had lower body weight, but higher salivary cortisol level than that of their suckling litter mates (P < 0.05). The composition of the colonic bacterial community and metabolites were different between the two groups, and the first predominant genus of the suckling and weaned piglets colonic microbiome were Bacteroides and Prevotellaceae-NK3B31 group respectively. The suckling piglets had higher proportions of phylum Bacteroidetes and Lentisphaerae, and genus Bacteroides and Lactobacillus in the colonic microbial community, but lower abundance of genus Prevotellaceae-NK3B31 group than that of the weaned piglets (P < 0.05). Accordingly, there were 15 colonic metabolites differed between the two groups, in which 2 metabolites (phenylacetic acid and phenol) negatively related to the abundant of Lactobacillus genus (P < 0.05), while 9 metabolites (acetic acid, arabitol, benzoic acid, caprylic acid, cholesterol, dihydrocholesterol, galactinol, glucose phenol, phenylacetic acid, and oxamic acid, glycerol, propionic acid) positively associated with the proportion of Prevotellaceae-NK3B31 group genus (P < 0.05). Furthermore, the salivary cortisol level negatively associated with the abundance of phylum Lentisphaerae, but positively associated with the phylum Bacteroidetes and the genus Prevotellaceae-NK3B31 group (P < 0.05) respectively. These results provide us with new insights into the cause of the gut microbiome and stress, and the contributions of gut microbiome in metabolic and physiological regulation in response to weaning stress.
Highlights
Gut microbiota is known to play an essential role in host physiological regulation, including digestion, metabolism and immune
After 48 h of experiment, the bodyweight of the suckling piglets increased by 0.37 ± 0.04 g, while the weaned piglets decreased by 0.11 ± 0.04 g, and there was a significant difference between the two groups (P < 0.01, Figure 1A)
The EIA assay illustrated that the salivary cortisol concentration of the weaned piglets increased significantly (P = 0.04, Figure 1B) compared to their suckling littermates, which indicated that weaned piglets were in stress state at this time
Summary
Gut microbiota is known to play an essential role in host physiological regulation, including digestion, metabolism and immune. Mental stress decreased the gut microbial richness and diversity in rodents (Winter et al, 2018). Piglets have built up a milkoriented microbiota. Weaning piglets is a typical model for understanding the stress effects on the gut microbiome and the overall health. The colonic microbial composition and functions of piglets on the third day of weaning were different from that of their suckling period (Li et al, 2018). The dynamic composition and diversity of gut microbiome shift over time (Grosicki et al, 2018). The different gut microbiome before and after weaning can not exclude the developmental effects. Comparison of the dynamics of gut microbiota between the suckling and weaned piglets paired in litters is of interest to elucidate the effects of weaning stress
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