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. It is often assumed that the maturational changes in the gastrointestinal microbiome become less pronounced the more time elapses after weaning and that the microbiome composition is more affected by the diet. However, age-related changes are still present possibly influencing the response of the intestinal microbiota to dietary changes. Nevertheless, dietary effects on the gut microbiota in growing pigs are often only assessed at one time point, typically at the termination of the experiment. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the effect of dietary phytase supplementation on the fecal bacterial microbiome development in pigs from the early to late fattening period. The samples of 64 pigs of which 30 pigs received the control diet and 34 pigs received the diet supplemented with phytase were collected at the beginning of the experiment and after 3, 5 and 10 weeks on the diets. DNA was extracted and the V3-V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene was sequenced on an Illumina MiSeq platform.