chicken gut metagenome Raw sequence reads

Chickens of good and poor feed efficiency differ in their gut microbiota composition. In order to modulate the gut microbiota towards a gut microbiota that improves feed efficiency, we investigated whether multiple administrations of a fecal microbial transplant from highly feed efficient donors in the first week post-hatch could improve feed efficiency in poorly feed efficient chickens. Differences in chicken faecal microbiota composition were assessed at 16 and 29 days post-hatch, and were related to chicken's residual feed intake (RFI; metric for feed efficiency), which was determined for the experimental period between day 9 and 30 post-hatch. At day 30 posthatch, chickens with extreme RFI values (low RFI = good feed efficiency; high RFI = poor feed efficiency) were selected, and only the 16S rRNA gene of DNA from fecal samples from selected chickens was sequenced.