Targeted cultivation and isolation of probiotic candidate taxa from the cecal microbiota of broiler chickens using culturomics

The gut microbiota in poultry plays a key role in host health, immunity, and disease resistance. Although metagenomic studies have expanded our understanding of microbial diversity in the chicken gut, a large proportion of detected taxa remain uncultured, limiting efforts to explore their functional roles and probiotic potential. In this study, we performed culturomics, a culture-dependent approach that combines diverse culture conditions with high-throughput 16S rRNA gene sequencing, to comprehensively assess the cultivability of chicken cecal microbiota, especially focusing on the recovery of beneficial bacterial species.