pig gut metagenome Metagenome

Besides the major nutrients, phosphorus is an essential nutrient for both the host animal and the porcine gut microbiota. Different strategies are used to enhance the phosphorus availability from cereals in pig diets, such as supplementation of phytase or soaking of cereals. However, their impact on the gut microbiota has been rarely related to virulence factor shedding in feces. Therefore, this study examined the effect of lactic acid treatment of dietary cereals and phytase supplementation on fecal microbiome of metabolic active bacteria and fecal shedding of virulence factor genes. Thirty-two growing pigs (6-8 weeks old) were fed one of four wheat-corn-soybean meal-based diets according to a completely randomized design with 4 replicate batches: control diet (Con), diet with phytase (500 FTU/kg; ConP), diet containing lactic acid-treated cereals (Lac), and diet with phytase and lactic acid-treated cereals (LacP). Each experimental period lasted 19 days. On day 19, feces were collected for total RNA isolation. After cDNA synthesis, the V3-V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene was sequenced on an Illumina MiSeq platform. Bioinformatics were performed in QIIME.