Abstract
Weaned piglets are vulnerable to nutritional, physiological, and psychological stressors, leading to abrupt taxonomic and functional shifts in the intestinal microbiome. In this study, an integrated approach combination of 16S rDNA gene sequencing and the mass spectrometry-based metabolomics techniques was used to investigate the effects of weaning stress on intestinal microbial composition and its metabolic profiles of piglets. Three litters of suckling piglets with same parity were chosen. The samples of colonic contents were collected from each selected piglets (weaned day, 3 days after weaned) for microbial and metabolomics analysis. The results showed that Lachnospiraceae, Negativicutes, Selenomonadales, Campylobacterales and other 15 species increased after weaning, while Porphyromonadaceace, Alloprevotella, Barnesiella and Oscillibacter decreased. Based on the function profiles prediction and metabolomic analysis, five key metabolic pathways including Phenylalanine metabolism, Citrate cycle (TCA cycle), Glycolysis or Gluconeogenesis, Propanoate metabolism, Nicotinate and nicotinamide metabolism might be the relevant pathways involved in weaning stress-induced gut microbiota dysbiosis. Taken together, these results indicated that weaning stress not only changed microbial composition and function but altered the microbial metabolic profiles in the intestine, which might provide a new insight in alleviating weaning stress and facilitating disease prevention during the period of weaning in piglets.
Highlights
The pig gut microbiota shows dynamic composition and diversity which shifts over time and along the whole gastrointestinal tract[7]
The results showed that the diversity of gut microbiota in weaned piglets was similar with nursing piglets, while the richness decreased
Campylobacteraceae and Campylobacter were increased after weaning. The increase of this bacterial species in weaned piglets may be one of the major reasons of post-weaning diarrhea. These results indicated that unhealthy alterations in the composition of gut microbiota triggered by weaning stress
Summary
The pig gut microbiota shows dynamic composition and diversity which shifts over time and along the whole gastrointestinal tract[7]. Weaning is usually conducted at around 3–4 weeks in the modern swine industry, and piglets are fed with solid diets instead of liquid milk. It is a sudden, complex and highly stressful event in pig’s life. Microbiota could exploit ingested dietary components, such as carbohydrates, proteins, and lipids to produce metabolites. There are some other metabolites produced by microbiota, including choline metabolites, bile acid metabolites, indole and phenolic derivatives These metabolites have been appreciated for their beneficial effects on intestinal barrier, immune regulation and inflammation[15]. The present work was designed to investigate the effects of weaning stress on gut microbiome and its metabolite profiles in piglets via an integrated approach combining 16S rDNA gene sequencing and GC-TOF/MS (Gas Chromatography Tandem Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry) method
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